


Hope of Morning

by Esahc



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emperor Karkat, Gamzee needs hugs, General Vantas AU, Hurt/Comfort, Implied torture (offscreen), Mirthful Family (past), No Sgrub AU, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, so many hugs, technically torture (onscreen)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 16:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6202828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esahc/pseuds/Esahc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are alone. No family. No home. Two sweeps in the Empress's dungeon is more than enough to strip hope from you. The destruction of your entire motherfucking caste is just the last little bit. Being prettied up and given away to some freakblood Emperor, for insult or for sabotage, it's just one more indignity to bear. It seems there's nothing left for you but to wait for the next blow to fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Control

 

They come at dusk and you meet them snarling, like you always do. It's become a routine in the last two sweeps. You greet them with snarls, they catch you with one of their long slim poles with the noose at the end. You think it's meant to be used at barkbeasts, feral lusii, that kinda shit, but the guards that come in always got at least one apiece, and no matter how you dodge, someone always gets you. What's _supposed_ to happen after that shit is one of their piss-poor intgarroters comes in and talks at you, and you tell them go fuck themselves, and someone hits you with one of the spare noose-sticks a while, and food happens after that. That's how it's gone the two sweeps you been here. They wanna know, where's the family holed up? Where're you hiding the wrigglers? How many are left and how much shit can they do before the fishbitch mops them up? And by those questions you know there's still family out there somewhere. They ain't come for you like this in near a half-sweep. You were starting to lose hope. They pin you up against the wall with the noose and a forked stick holding your choke closed and yeah, yeah, this is all real motherfucking familiar. Right up until they noose your fronds and chain them all up in broad sturdy cuffs you can't shift no matter how you struggle and yank your arms and a stick slams into your head and your vision goes spotty and black for the little bit it takes for them to start hauling you out of the cell that's all you've known the last fifty motherfucking perigees. Even on starvation rations and with no room to train, you're strong as fuck, but there's four of them and one of you, and five more waiting outside the block and for all your struggles, you're too weak to keep them from pulling you along like a recalcitrant barkbeast.

You are dragged into an ablutions block more ornate than anything you saw at the Cathedral, stripped to bare skin, for all you give a fuck, you've been heathen barefaced for the last two sweeps and used to nakedness. You care when they dunk you into a trap filled to the brim with water even colder than _you,_ and held down with the noose and the stick while hands attack you with soap and scrubbing cloths. You struggle and snarl, get foul-tasting foam in your mouth and cough and choke when you breathe wrong and get a mouthful of water. You score a few lucky strikes, bound as you are, and violet clouds the water some before you're dragged out again, pinned to the floor while you're attacked with absorption planes, and then held there, wheezing and growling while voices over you argue about what's to be done with your hair.

They shave it in the end. You coulda told them it ain't motherfucking worth trying to rescue after your braids and shit been left to do as they will for two sweeps. You don't like the result, but no one asked you anyhow, it's all bristly-short around your ears, less so on top, where they've left you enough to at least cover the roots of your horns. You look five sweeps younger than you are, with your skinny bare shoulders and your horns all thin and your limbs all awkward, not even your hair to lend you bulk and size. They dress you again, with brisk efficient movements that don't give you time to struggle. Your cuffs detach and reattach at the command of a psionic with downturned eyes off in the corner. He don't look at you as he works you around like a puppet at their amusement. He could kill every motherfucker in this room easier than you could, but he don't even _think_ to as your arms are wrenched implacably back and forth, fine tyrian-dyed silk settling 'round your shoulders like flower-smelling clouds, and you don't know _what_ the motherfuck's going on but you know you don't like it as you're pinned to the floor again, careful not to ruffle the fine threads on you, and your arms are twisted up behind your back and the cuffs click and fasten together as unkind hands grasp your horns above the suppressor rings and twist your head so you can't thrash nor bite while a smooth metal ring's fastened 'round your throat. A collar. When the hands on your horns let go and the weight on your back lets up so you can scramble to your feet and jerk to a halt between two heavy motherfucking chains, you get a good motherfucking look of yourself in the big ablutionsblock mirror. A panicky seven-sweep-old wriggler stares back at you with wide eyes, instead of the probably ten-and-a-bit battle-trained warrior you actually are.

They let you stare for the few motherfucking seconds it takes for the chains to go tight and you're dragged along the halls and blocks 'till they can shove you into an airskimmer. It's hours of flight and no idea where the motherfuck they're taking you, 'till you finally get there, and you were right. You _really_ don't motherfucking like what's going on.

*  *  *

The problem with being the kind of wildly successful general that accidentally founds a country is, you're not actually leadership material. At least not the kind of leadership material that _leads an entire country_ . You're a foot soldier that got lucky, ended up in the right place at the right time, and kept right fucking on getting lucky until someone was trying to put a fucking _crown_ on your head. You have no idea what the terms on these treaties actually fucking are. It's a fucking miracle they exist at all. Some lucky bluff and a few victories, and the Condesce is somehow entirely fucking willing to roll over and recognize there's a country here? You're pretty sure that she's got some kind of horrible, horrible trick up her sleeve.

Not that she has sleeves. You're not entirely sure she's got a _shirt._ You are reasonably sure her body suit is actually painted on over her chitin plates. You have somehow managed to keep from blushing at the sight of her. She's lounging on some kind of manually-carried conveyance, lazily perusing her copy of the treaty. The four trolls that carried her in are kneeling precisely behind the bars, all brownbloods, all with remarkably similar horns. You're reminded uncomfortably of history feeds with matched musclebeast teams drawing carriages.

Abruptly, she heaves an incredibly fake yawn that bares all her creepy seadweller teeth. "Alright, guppy. That's enough of all this fuckin boring ship." You look up from your tablet, frowning. It's not remotely close to dawn, and she's already told you more than once she plans to 'Fuck back off to the deeps for a while.' after tonight. "Ain't no fuckin thing here that won't hold another perigee or so. I figure, it's high tide for me to give ya a thing and fuck off a while." She grins, like it's obvious you have no fucking idea what she's talking about. "See, there's this old fuckin tradition from back when diplomacy was a thing. The surrendering party, that's me." no one should be that fucking smug about surrendering. "Gives the victorious party, that's you." she points at you like a wriggler learning her alphabet. "Somefin nice, as a show of respect and all that. I figured it might be kinda fuckin fun to do, seeing as what we got here is the first diplomatic meeting between nations since before I was Empress."

If you tell her to go fuck herself, she's going to laugh at you, and Kanaya will make you eat her chainsaw. And this whole crazy endeavor will have been a colossal waste of time, because as soon as she finishes laughing she's gonna start putting a fork through every fucking troll in this complex. It takes you a distressingly long time to figure out something diplomatic to say. "Sure," you grit out as her grin gets wider. "Sounds. Fun." That was fucking terrible. You miss the days when you could just hit whatever was causing you problems until it went away.

"Now, I know you ain't got anyfin in the way of steady quadrants. Fuck knows I spent enough time tryna krill'm" You try to keep from visibly bristling at her as she waves at one of her attendants, who scampers out of the room. Yeah, fuck her, you know better than to get involved with someone when you're leading a war against the fucking Condescension, she's got no business talking like it's some kind of personal failing. Besides, you have plenty of friends, you've always gotten through drone season just fucking fine. "But I hear tell you got one _hell_ of a harem. Ashways at least." And fuck her for making that sound so suggestive. "So I figure, you being some kinda fuckin emperor now, you might as well get a start on the rest, you know?" You get a sinking feeling in your gut as the door opens and two seadwellers holding chains stride in, looking like they're dragging something. "Sorry he don't look like much just now. Poor little clownfish just got him some _real_ bad news. I'm thinking he'll do you well enough in pitch, to start at least, but who the fuck am I to tell you what to do with him?"

It's really only your resolution to keep quiet unless you have something constructive to say that keeps you from telling the Alternian empress to get the fuck out and take her disgusting insinuations with her. The troll on the end of those chains doesn't look more than six. Seven at the most. You clench your fists under the table. "Your imperial highness." you start, and you can tell right off the bat your voice is betraying how fucking upset you are with the current situation. "As much as I appreciate the, ugh, _generous_ gesture-"

"A' course," she interrupts like you're not even speaking. "It's kinda fuckin insulting to turn down a gift a' this kinda magnitude. That's the last indigo in the world, you know." The poor bastard on the chains actually visibly flinches when she says that. "Far as we can tell anyway. We looked _real fuckin hard_. Valuable little guppy like that's damn near priceless."

Fuck. So that's her game. Some kind of sick powerplay. Either let this kid into your complex with a really heavy implication that he's supposed to be a sort of live-in concupiscent hire, or refuse with the clear indication that refusal comes with resumed hostilities. You know your people can't handle another war this soon. You might have superior ground and strategy, but she's got the sheer numbers to wear you down and you know she's more than willing to throw thousands of lowbloods away on a meaningless war.

There's no way you can smile politely and accept this perverted fucking 'gift'. You go for 'gravely regal' and probably achieve 'constipated'. She's smirking at you.  "Your highness is," ugh. "Beyond generous. I would be. Happy. To accept this...gift. In the spirit it's offered." You need a fucking shower. You're going to steal some metal scrubbers out of Zahakk's shop and scrub all your fucking skin off. You wave behind you, and two of your guards come forward to take the chains from the seadwellers. They look about as comfortable as you are. At least they're trolls you know from the battlefield. You give them the hand signals for 'go' and 'hold position' and they lead the kid out of the room. He doesn't struggle, at least.

Things go about as smoothly as can be expected after that. There's a lot of posturing and thinly-veiled death threats, two small brawls break out between your guards and her entourage, but nothing you didn't more than expect. No one dies, and when the empress takes her leave, everyone still has their limbs attached. When her convoy lifts away from the landing pad and speeds away towards the coast, the whole fucking complex heaves a sigh of relief. You allow yourself two full minutes of breathing as you sit slumped at your table, before you force yourself to stand up and go figure out what the fuck to do with your 'gift'.

*  *  *

He's taller than you. You didn't really expect that from your first impression of him. You've put on a lot of height and weight since your first late pupation; you're not an angry squawky midget anymore, seven solid sweeps of fighting will do that. But this kid's a little more than even with you before you count his horns. Maybe even more than that, with how he's slouching. You could still probably pick him up one-handed. You can see his fucking _ribs_ under the flappy little scraps of tyrian silk the Condesce probably thinks counts as clothes.

He's standing, shoulders hunched, eyes down. You have no fucking idea what to do with him. "Someone go get a fucking uniform." clothes are a start, at least. Real fucking clothes. "We probably don't have anything in your color." you add apologetically to him. "Sorry."

 _That_ gets him to look up. His expression is dull and flat, but something in his eyes manages to look sullenly angry. "Motherfucker," he starts, his voice hoarse and painful-sounding, "I give impression of any kinda _caring?_ "  There's a tinge of red in his sclera, and when he talks you see a flash of violet on his teeth. You're bizarrely glad to see it. It's _weird_ to see a troll this cold on the spectrum so beaten down.

You look back at him steadily, "No, I guess not." you're clinging to every scrap of control you've developed on the battlefield to keep from just cutting him loose and letting him fuck off wherever he wants to go. You have no idea who he is, or what he's _actually_ supposed to be doing here. Someone of his chroma should logically be part of the Condesce's inner circle, not wearing suppressor rings and (Ugh.) a fucking slave collar. He could be a spy or an assassin or who even fucking knows what. "So while we wait on that. Are you going to go on some kind of murderous rampage if I take these off?" You can see vivid purple around the edges of the cuffs and he's going to have trouble getting a shirt on while he's chained up, but you're not going to risk your people.

He laughs, a sharp humorless little 'ha!' and sneers at you, "Sure, man, just motherfucking waiting to get my hellmirth and slaughter on here." You watch him, waiting him out the same way you used to wait out mouthy trainees. After a minute he slumps and hunches his shoulders again, looking away. "Ain't no murderrampage coming, I'll motherfucking behave m'self." he mumbles.

Against any kind of sane common sense, you believe him. And if you're wrong, you have enough people here to take him out before he does much damage, for all you'd rather it didn't come to that. "Come here, then." he approaches in a weird kinda sidelong shuffle, eyeing your guards warily. You examine the cuffs once he's in reach. They're heavy, quality leather reinforced with steel bands, and it takes you a minute to figure out how they come apart. He holds perfectly still while you separate them and search around for the catch that lets them drop off his wrists. Even after that, he moves slowly, watching you out of the corner of his eye carefully as he rubs at the raw purple marks. While you're there, you check out the collar, moving slowly so you don't startle him. It looks welded shut, there's a painful-looking purple burn on the bare back of his neck. Psionics probably. You curse. "We're gonna need bolt cutters if you want this off." and a nurseradicator too, besides the burn you can see a really concerning number of bruises on his thorax, and the way he's moving makes you think some of his ribs are at least cracked. You realize you've been standing behind him with your hand on his collar for long enough it's starting to get weird, and he's tense and growling subvocally.

 

You drop the collar and step away, running your claws through your hair and breathing out hard. You have _no fucking idea_ what to do with him, and you're pretty sure it's fucking obvious, so you hope he's really _not_ a spy. At least the growling's stopped.

Okay. Time for some real actual fucking decisions to be made. You square your shoulders and the soldiers in the room all jump to attention. "Vincnt, Yundin, you're on first-shift guard duty, Torion and Kuntal will relieve you at 1500," You start, trying for the rapid-fire orders you give on the battlefield, the ones that are spur of the moment but sound planned. "I want him on constant surveillance until further notice." you ignore how he's looked around at you, surprise all over his face. You don't give a fuck that he can hear you. You _want_ him to know he's being watched. "Find him a spare two-block suite, standard coon, private ablutions." It's a luxury but you don't want him in the communal spaces right now. "Rearrange people if you have to, I'll make it up to them." You turn on him. "And you, fuck, what even is your name?"

He looks shell-shocked and a little apprehensive when you talk to him, and you have to snap at him before he startles, jumps to something that looks almost like attention, and stutters out, "Makara, uh. Gamzee Makara, motherfucker." You ignore the explicative, it's not worth picking a fight over.

"Makara." he's looking at you like that should mean something but whatever. You'll get someone to research that for you. "You're on block arrest until I say otherwise. You're going to stay wherever we find to put you, and be very quiet and not cause me or my people any fucking trouble until I figure out what the fuck the Condesce's game is. If you can manage that, we'll see about allowing you a little more freedom. Understood?" you don't wait for a response. "Someone tell Kanaya or Torion or whoever's free to drop by his block and give him a health eval, I want a full report by midnight tomorrow," you pause, no one's moving. "Am I forgetting anything?" no one volunteers any information, "Then let’s move the fuck out, people. We got shit to do that's not getting done. Hop to it." You deliver the last sentence in full battlefield bellow and everyone, including Makara, hops the fuck to it. You rub a temple. You need a fucking nap.

*  *  *

You get left in a block all motherfucking empty but for a little table and chair, and a coon and a door that, when you look, leads to a little ablutionsblock and that's the end of it. The teal that led you here told you him and the pissblood are gonna be guarding the motherfucking door, like you're stupid enough to run for it. You're hours and hours flight from the Empress's palace, and you ain't never heard of any freakblood Emperor, so you gotta be near on the other motherfucking side of the empire from home, even if it weren't-

But you're not gonna think on that shit, cause there ain't no single motherfucking thing you can do just now about that. You're just gonna. Gonna do something. There ain't nothing sharp in here, so you can't get your paint on. Instead you find a little corner out of direct sight from the door, settle yourself on the floor against the wall to pray as best you can.

You're on your third repetition of devotions when there comes a polite little knock on the door, like you got any kinda power to stop whoever the motherfuck wants to come in from coming in. The door opens and you gotta swallow a furious hiss, 'cause it's a _rainbowdrinker_ walking in. It pauses with a confused looking frown at the empty room, eyes flicking over the furniture 'till they light on you, and it relaxes some. "Well come on, then, let’s get this over with."

It has a soft, feminine voice. Maybe it was female when it was a troll. You don't move from your corner. When it steps toward you, you growl. It's an embarrassing sound, half a whine, high and scared. Its lips turn down even more until it's scowling. "Don't be ridiculous. The sooner you let me examine you, the sooner I can give you these clothes I've brought you, and the sooner we can both get on with our nights." your growl ticks up a half-pitch. It glares at you and the faint light of its skin brightens. It takes a step towards you and you shrink back into your corner. Before all this shit it would've been _easy._ Rainbowdrinkers are strong, sure, but they're as vulnerable as any midblood to the fearmongering. Pan like yours, you'd've had it bleeding out its shiny-ass motherfucking ears before it even got close enough to bite.

As it is, it glows at you and glares, and you press more into your corner and bare your teeth like an angry barkbeast until it props its fists on its hips and snaps. "Gamzee Makara come here _right now._ " in the exact same tone Sister Shatered used to use on you when you were a naughty little motherfucking wriggler, and you're creeping dejectedly out your corner before you even know what the fuck's happening. It ain't even drinker mind control 'cause that's all fake-ass hearsay, it's just you being a dumbass. It's also too late 'cause it’s flashing forward and you're out of shape and too weak to dodge when she catches you by the scruff of the neck and hauls you to your feet like a harmless purrbeast. You've gone dead still with fear, sure it’s about to sink those lethal color-stealing fangs into your throat.

Instead, it just goes 'harrumph' kinda grumpy and put-upon, and deposits you in the little chair. It bends down to look you in the eye, face softening some like its playing at sympathy. "I know you're scared." you make a scandalized noise that it ignores. "But it really would be best to let me examine you. I'm a trained Doctorturer, and Karkat thinks you might be injured more seriously than you appear to be." You don't know who the fuck Karkat is, or why they give a single flying motherfuck you're hurt. Anyone who gives a fuck 'bout that shit's long dead. It gives you a minute to not respond before it sighs noisily. "May I _pretty please_ examine you and submit a report to the General so I can go the _fuck_ back to sleep?"

Oh. Right. The freakblood emperor did say some shit about a report. Fuck knows why. "Fine." you grunt and make yourself breathe deep like you been taught to do to steady your hands when the fear hits you. "Do whatever the fuck you like."

It sits back on its heels and rises up to its full imposing height, something that's maybe satisfaction on its face. "If you'd be so kind as to remove your. ah. Shirt?" There's something in its tone that makes you think you oughta be offended at it. Ain't _your_ choice of garb though. You rise up off the chair cautiously and drag the ugly piece of shit thorax covering over your head, making yourself not wince at the way it makes that one side of your torso stretch.

It's efficient at least. Scribbles a fuckton of shit down on a tablet as it walks a circle around you, poking and prodding, telling you to breathe deep, making careful _hmm_ sounds when you can't suppress a yelp or a snarl when it reaches the tender swollen parts of your thorax, where a chitin plate buckled and healed wrong, or where your endoskeletal thoracic struts are maybe battered some. Even for all that, when it steps away from you and you can breathe a little easier, not more than a half-hour has passed. It offers you a little smile you meet with a suspicious glower, and from its sylladex it pulls out a pile of black cloth, "Now that we've got that over with." It shakes out a pair of unadorned black pants like you seen the guards here wearing, and a plain black undershirt with no color to it. "I wasn't sure of the measurements, but I'll soon have something a little more suitable for you, and these should more than suffice for now." It sets a little stack of black cloth on the chair you guess is more, and it's all near enough what you would've expected, if you'd been thinking to expect anything. What you don't expect is the wide band of cloth that flutters out of the shirt, vivid violent purple a shade more blue than your chroma.

You reach out hesitantly, and when you don't get hit nor shouted at, you touch it. It's soft shiny cloth. You don't know threadcraft well enough to know what kind. It's got a funny little braided bit on the inside. You just kinda hold it, not real sure what it's for, just knowing it's near your motherfucking color, and you ain't seen it in two motherfucking sweeps but for what little muddied bits you bleed when you're getting kicked about.

"I know it's not quite the right color." your head snaps up at the words, spoken all soft and gentle. Its ears are a little motherfucking green, like maybe it's embarrassed. "But I thought you might like _something_ ." it stops abruptly and shakes its head a little. "It slips over your arm, see?" It lifts its own arm. It doesn't really _need_ one. Its entire outfit is jade green and black, but it's still got a broad green band wrapped 'round its arm all richly embroidered with a little serpent's staff symbol you mistake for the Lady's emblem at first. "Everyone in the army gets one. It's much easier than adding color to every individual's uniform."

You open your mouth, close it, and abruptly feel very much like the wriggler you look like just now. "I. Uh." You swallow. "C'n I put a shirt on now?" you ask real soft. You don't say anything about the odd, unexpected kindness of your color in your hands.

The rainbowdrinker goes "Oh!" all surprised, and then "Yes, of course, my apologies!" and then it's gone and the door's clicking shut behind it and you're blessedly alone to blink wetly at the band of cloth in your hands. You set it very carefully on the table. A shirt goes on first. Sturdy soft cloth that fits all motherfucking loose on you. The pants don't motherfucking stay up, and they're short in the leg, but there's a belt all coiled on top of the pile of spares, and you can tighten it enough you're pretty sure they won't fall off. By the time you pick the armband up again, it don't make your traitor eyes go wet anymore. Your sleeves are too loose to put the band over it, but once you figure the trick of tightening it, it fits your bare arm well enough, and when you go peer at yourself in the ablutionsblock mirror, you look almost like a troll again. Too young, heathen barefaced and scared shitless, but a motherfucking troll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a little bit of a personal experiment. I'm planning to post as chapters are finished, so updates will be intermittent as school and real life allow, but I'm in screaming full-steam-ahead momentum just now, so I'm hoping to ride that for at least one more chapter.  
> For now, though, thank you for reading, please do point out any mistakes that slipped through, I would love to fix them.


	2. Ghosts

Once you're clothed you explore the block more thoroughly. There's an air vent up in the corner big enough you could probably squeeze through, if you were stupid enough to try and run. You make a note of it anyway, in case you need it. The ablutionsblock is as sparse as the block is, just an ablutions stall, washbasin, loadgaper. The chair and table in the block are both cheap-ass wood pulp, useless for a weapon, even if you wanted to risk punishment for breaking shit. You spend that first night waiting. Mostly you spend it in your corner, trying to recall psalms you've forgotten. It's been _so motherfucking long_ since you needed to know hymns of mourning. Time passes and stretches in long hours of not much happening.

The coon is empty for the first few hours. A twitchy-looking rustie floats a barrel of sopor in to fill it sometime after the rainbowdrinker leaves. When he's gone you dip a finger in and wonder if Kurloz would understand, just this _once._ It's not like he's alive to be disappointed at you. But you know better than to think he won't kick your ass six ways from Sunday the second you hit the dark carnival, pulling shit like that. You almost stick your hand in your mouth anyhow, but you wipe the slime off before you can give in. Maybe later, if you decide to sleep in it. Maybe if you _don't_ sleep in it they'll take it away again and you won't have to decide.

A few motherfucking hours after that, the yellowblood pokes his head in. You're gonna growl and swipe at him if he comes near you; he's damn near twice and half again your weight and you got no voodoos to fight him off with, but there's a smell wafting in almost like real actual _meat_ and you can't help leaning toward the door some, for all you know better. The fishbitch's guards did the same motherfucking thing, taunting you with their meals and laughing when you investigated the empty paper, even knowing there weren't shit worth finding there. He sets a little paper sack on the floor just in reach of the door, eyes on you the whole time just like you expect, and you don't budge one inch the whole long motherfucking time the door's open. He gets a look on his face like 'whatever' and closes the door again, and you make yourself wait another few long minutes before you creep across the floor to check it out.

He must've given you the wrong motherfucking bag, 'cause there's a whole grubburger in there, all wrapped in paper and with gruntbeast strips, cheese and all, and a little carton of fried beetles. You don't give him time to realize his mistake and take it away, you scarf the whole motherfucking thing, wishing you had time to savor it, but wanting the actual taste of _meat_ more than you want to make it last.

Maybe an hour after that, your belly complains at you, more than usual, and you poke it with a finger and glare down at it. A little after that, you've _almost_ remembered the right tune for Kurloz's third-favorite mourning hymn when you go _hurk_ and have to scramble for the loadgaper. So _that_ was the trick, you think as you press your forehead against the cool chitin of the bowl. Stupid, not thinking they could've fucked with it. You know better, now.

Couple hours after you get yourself up, rinse your mouth with cool water from the washbasin, and go back to your corner, there's yelling outside, you can't quite understand what they're saying. Some brownblood sticks his head in, looks 'round 'till he sees you, scowls, and shuts the door again. More yelling. You tuck your face against your knees and take a nap.

You dunno what time it is when you startle awake. The brownblood from before is walking from the door to your table. You hold perfectly still and watch him 'till he goes. He left a little cup of something on the table. Smells like milk, not cold. You make yourself take only the littlest sip, and wait a long, long time, 'till you're _sure_ it's not fucked with before you finish it as slow as you can manage. You sleep more.

The empty cup disappears some time while you're sleeping, and you ain't motherfucking stupid, okay? You know there's a laughsassin about. Whatever the lowblood version is. Even if you can't feel the voodoos prickling at you, you know the feeling of watchful eyes. Must be a real motherfucking good one if they came and went without you knowing, sleeping dry like you are. You sleep some more, and when you wake it's 'cause the smell of food is making your belly churn. There's a little steaming cup and when you go look, it's just thin broth. You sip it carefully and it makes your belly flip unpleasantly, but you keep it down.

You dunno how many nights go by like that. You sleep a lot. Your stomach complains sometimes when you drink the things left for you, but never so bad as the first time. By the time twelve cups have happened, you're starting to wonder what's gonna happen to you. You weren't paying much motherfucking attention when you got given away. Sometimes you sit by the door and listen to your guards, though, when you're awake long enough to get bored, and you hear them saying shit like 'concupiscent slave' and 'Commander Vantas' and 'something about a harem'. If this freakblood emperor thinks you're here for to be his new little pailslave, he'll be learning better the most painful way you can manage. Maybe, if you hurt him bad enough, he'll have you executed.

*  *  *

You mean to deal with your 'guest' the next evening, you really do. When the first wave of your alarms goes off the evening after the Condesce left, you have about thirty seconds of blissful ignorance before you remember the purpleblood locked up in the guest quarters. With psionic suppressors bolted onto his horns. Because he is apparently your _slave._ Your slave the Condesce gave to you. Your second wave of alarms goes off before you can duck your head back under the slime and refuse to deal with this, and your automated beverage caffeinator hisses as the smell of your very fucking expensive coffee starts to fill the block. If you hide under the slime and refuse to deal with this your very fucking expensive coffee will go to waste. You groan and haul yourself out of your coon.

You have a routine you follow every evening. You fill your big mug, the one Kanaya insists is meant to hold soup, not coffee, with a handful of the shitty grounds that go out with deployed troops, a handful of sugar, and enough boiling water to fill it _almost_ to the brim. While that steeps, you scrape the worst of the slime off you, mop up the sopor you trailed across the floor, and by the time you throw the towel in the hamper, your first cup of the day is strong enough and cool enough to drain in exactly five greedy, gritty gulps. You chew absently on the leftover grounds in the bottom of the mug as you drag your slightly-less dead carcass into the ablutions stall and stand under the freezing spray until you're awake enough to actually appreciate the brew your hundred-some-odd caegar beverage caffinator made for you.

By your third cup, you're troll enough to face the literal mountain of paperwork Terezi has usually managed to leave in your office overday. You don't know why she bothers, it's all delivered digitally to your tablet, but she insists paper is somehow superior. You humor her for long enough to sign the most urgent things you can see, dump the most irritating into the trashcan, and stack the rest to shove into Sollux's inbox. Anything only you can deal with will find its way back to you. It always does.

You _meant_ to look over the reports on Makara after you ditched your paperwork for the evening, but shouting starts up just outside your door, and you have to go haul Yundin off Themas _again._ And then Kuntal and Nepeta start a beefgrub stampede; you don't even know _why._ And then one of the border patrols sends an urgent distress signal and you have to shuffle troops around to free up reinforcements to assist against the Condesce's 'rogue elements'. And then, and then and _then_.

And then it's a fucking _week_ later, and you _finally_ get to the bottom of your report pile and trip over the folder for Gamzee Makara and you have to put your head down on your desk and bask in your idiocy for a minute because _how do you forget the fucking sex slave?_

Kanaya's health evaluation is on top. It shows about what you expected from looking at him. Three ribs she suspects are broken, at least one molt's worth of chitin plates improperly shed, superficial cuts and bruises, buckled and damaged plates, broken fingers, signs of malnutrition. Basically he's skinny, beaten all to hell and hasn't been able to take care of himself for fuck knows how long, she's already drawn out a treatment plan and you know better than to try and reject it.

The file under that is a thick sheaf of expensive-looking paper. The first page is hot pink and liberally covered in gold-and-pink glitter that you despair of ever getting out of your carpet ever again. You don't bother trying to decipher the fish puns. The rest of the pages are a certificate of ownership, ownership transfer pages, and a whole fuckton of other legal shit that means you get to own another troll. You have to get up to immediately go shove the whole fucking mess into Terezi's hands and snap, "Fix this."

The research you asked for is a jumble of conflicting information and at least some of it _has_ to be fake. There's no way that kid's old enough to have been _alive_ during half these battles, never mind _fight_ in them. Whatever. The stuff that looks to be mostly-true is alarming enough, ancestral name comes from a region in a recently-conquered part of the Alternian empire, that's tame enough. But associated with some kind of apocalyptic cult? Purplebloods are rare enough, but he's looking more and more like an actual threat. You need to figure out how the fuck to deal with him other than the _really unhelpful_ suggestions Sollux keeps dropping in your inbox.

You make a note in your tablet to remind you to talk with some of the guards assigned to his block, to get their impression of him, send off an email to Kuntal and Nepeta thanking them for _getting along for once_ and working out a guard rotation without you holding their hands the whole fucking way, and then your emergency line goes off again, because the reinforcements you sent to the border are now _looting_ the border.

 

Goddamnit, Vriska.

 

She's maintaining radio silence, which is pretty much the only order of yours she _is_ following. Which means you're going to have to go down there and yell at her in person. Because fuck knows she won't listen to Terezi while they're off-again and she probably won't listen to you, but at least you can yell louder than she can, and her criminals are scared of you. You catch the next airskimmer out to the base nearest her rampage, and don't remember fucking Makara again until your tablet alarm goes off to remind you to interview the guards. Well, Fuck.

*  *  *

You've lost count of how many cups of broth or milk have come and gone by the time you realize you've been awake long enough to see the trolls that bring them at least three times in a row. It's been at least seven nights by your thinking, and you're starting to get kinda motherfucking restless, waiting on whatever's gonna happen to you. You still don't move out of your corner 'cept when you're sure no one's gonna come in the door. They don't noose you like the brinesuckers did, you don't wanna give them the idea they ought to. You still got that damned motherfucking collar 'round your throat, and it bothers at you some, more as you spend more time awake. You spend the time between 'meals' pacing the block or sitting at the door listening to your guards gossip, and learning what you can about this place.

Mostly what you learn at first is the one with the nasalier voice don't got _any_ motherfucking luck with quads, and probably he should stop coming off _quite_ so desperate at the other poor bastard he's stationed with. You wonder if it's the one who poisoned you, but you haven't seen that one since. Maybe he got culled for fucking with his emperor's property.

You _do_ learn things on the other guard shifts. There's some kinda sketchy motherfucking diplomacy going on with the fishbitch, which you're meant to be part of. The freakblood's not strong enough to negotiate a total surrender. The freakblood's _too_ strong and he's gonna piss off the fishbitch and start another war. You wonder why every motherfucker that talks like that makes it sound like a _bad_ thing. You kinda miss fighting, even if you'd get yourself culled in six seconds stepping on a battlefield as you are now.

Between all the meaningless gossip you don't give a fuck about, you get little tidbits about the kinda troll you been given at. There's lots of conflicting ideas about him, he's just and fair, he's a coldhearted ass, he's a miraculous strategist, he's _okay_ but he ain't motherfucking perfect. Mostly no one who's assigned to your block seems to know him well, but they all seem the slightest little bit scared of him. Your traitor pan turns to Kurloz for a single moment, thinking on leaders just and fair and an asshole and kinda scary. You shake yourself and get up to pace again, shoving the thought of any heretical mutantblooded motherfucker being at all like your ancestor out of your mind.

On the ninth night, or maybe the tenth, of waiting for this emperor to come and try doing some shit at you, you learn he ain't even in the _complex_. He's all the way down at the border, dealing with some kinda motherfucking rebellion only he can deal with. Learning he ain't near should've put you at ease, knowing naught's gonna happen at you but boredom 'till the rebellion's put down, but it just pisses you off, being made to wait any longer to learn what's meant to happen at you than you've already had to. You spend the whole of that motherfucking night pacing 'round the block, not settling even when a troll comes in to take away the empty broth cup and leave you one with milk and a plate with a bitty little beefgrub sandwich. It's hardly worth the name, thin little grainloaf sheets, beefgrub slices not much thicker, but it's the first thing you've had to chew on since the grubburger. You nibble it slowly, careful of trickery, but it's just bland, not poisoned.

Another few hours of pacing wear off your irritation at being made to wait. If this motherfucker thinks he's gonna wear you down like this, he's got no idea how to deal with a subjugglator. You settle back in your corner and go back to your prayers. You can get your patience on, the fishbitch didn't break you, this little freakblood won't either.

Probably-three nights later, you're not so motherfucking sure. Only, you're _so motherfucking bored._  Tiny bland beefgrub sandwiches have become slightly-less-tiny bland beefgrub sandwiches, and you become more and more restless the more time passes. You realize you have enough room in this block to train some. You almost crack a horn trying to do one measly motherfucking handstand. One of your guards peeks in the door at the noise. You snarl at him. You're pretty sure you hear a snicker before the door clicks shut.

In the ablutionsblock mirror, you poke at the suppressor rings some, but they're as tightly bolted as they always were. That shit ain't coming off unless someone gets at them with proper tools. More pacing, more eavesdropping, more prayer. Your sleep becomes restless, twitchy. You still haven't touched the coon since it got filled. You think probably you're just being stubborn at this point. You dream more than you'd like, of faces you never wanna see the way you see them, broken and sun-bloated, color spilled and wasted. You think sopor would make the dreams stop, or make them come less often anyway. You keep sleeping dry. Maybe this is your penance for still being around, having to see that shit. You wake with your face wet some days, and those times keep yourself awake by singing psalms and hymns of death and mourning under your breath 'till your eyes don't threaten to close.

You manage to make it worse on what you think is probably the twentieth day. You're not curled in your corner anymore, you're on the battlefield, giving the orders that'll get all your brothers dead, and this time you know it, but no matter how you try, your elocution flap keeps on wagging, talking shit and giving orders and you clap Seyova on the back as she goes, share a fang-bearing grin at Rundas, tug Clepis's braids 'till he growls and slaps at you, but you're all seven of you laughing with murder on your tongues and mirth in your pans, and in your soul you’re _screaming_ , 'cause you're saying ' _easy as fuck, brothers, we'll be home by midnight’_ when the enemy rises up from the earth, pours from the trees, gaping wet mouths and empty pits for eyes, and it's _wrong_ 'cause it was only ten, and they came out the river you were camping on, stupid motherfuckers you were, and they were just _trolls._ But it's the same thing even so, one by one, each of your brothers dies with strangled gurgling cries as their throats grin wide and wet and purple, taken unawares and never knowing brinesuckers could move so _fast._ Between the seven of you, five fish are gutted and broken, and their color spilled for the Lord, but there's as many again, and in your dream the dead rise up to feast on the wasted color and ruined flesh of them you loved.

You have enough time to hear "Hey, are you oka-" and feel a hand on your shoulder before you're moving, and it's not 'till it's too late to take it back you realize the blood splattering your face is burning-hot, not slimy-cold. Crackling energy flashes around you and you slam against a wall hard enough you hear something crack, and while you're stunned, there's shouting and footsteps, something being dragged, and a door slams. When you're aware again, you are alone, and you can't move without your ribs screaming at you, and there is rust on your hands and the taste of metal on your tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates may slow down after this. Two chapters in two days is kinda ridiculous for me. 
> 
> Any mistakes, typos, or anything else, please do feel free to let me know so I can fix them, thank you for reading!


	3. Misery Business

You come home to chaos, which isn't unusual. Neither are the trolls waiting to grab your attention before you can even get out of the fucking air skimmer. Torion's got his clipboard out, which is  _ never  _ a good thing, and you  _ really  _ don't fucking want to deal with this. You cut them all off before the one you don't recognize can even finish saying, "Sir my matesprit."

"It can fucking wait." You have a headache. The Vriska-inflicted kind. You are tired. You've subsisted on shitty coffee and energy rations for the last two fucking weeks, and you want a hot meal, a cold shower, and a warm coon, in that order.

There's a lot of loud and irritating protesting, the tell-tale smack and yelp of Torion employing clipboardkind, and you're all set to ignore all of it until you hear, "That  _ fucking  _ purpleblood." and you stop.

"Say again?" to be honest Makara's been on your mind the last _ week _ . You still don't have a whole lot of idea of what to do with him. You've gotten  _ some  _ reports back from the guards while you were gone, but you haven't had much time to look over them. Your request is answered with another jumble of shouted answers. You count to ten, take a deep breath, and bellow, "QUIET THE FUCK DOWN." They quiet the fuck down. You point at Torion. "Medic first."

"My  _ patient, _ " Torion snaps, glaring daggers at the soldier, -you recognize the insignia on his armband, now, trainee infilterrigator- "was assaulted, injured to an as-yet unknown severity, and in defending himself-"

He gets interrupted before he can finish, and you make a note to either demote this guy or ask Nepeta what the fuck she's teaching these assholes. "Almost fucking killed my matesprit.  _ Sir,  _ he didn't assault the prisoner, he was just making sure he was  _ okay. _ " He finally sees the look on your face and shuts the fuck up. "Uh. Sir."

You look back at Torion and motion for him to go on, "Your  _ matesprit, _ " He sneers, "grabbed an unconscious troll in obvious distress and panicked when he got the fangs in his throat he  _ so obviously fucking deserved. _ " You hold up a hand and he stops. You let Kanaya put Torion in charge of Makara for this exact reason, the guy has a  _ horrible  _ bedside manner, but he doesn't fuck around with caste politics, and he keeps his patients alive. Kanaya's way too busy to keep up with the level of care the kid needs, and Torion's the next best option. It doesn't mean he's any less of an asshole than he is, though.

"Is the matesprit alive?" That's the first priority, you don't want to be fending off fucking revenge cycle attempts.

"He cauterized his own torn arteries." Torion sounds begrudgingly impressed, "He didn't even come close to bleeding out."

Okay, good. "Then you don't have anything to complain about. Dismissed." you tell the matesprit. You cut off the wave of protests, "He did something really fucking stupid, he got fucked up for it, he's still alive. Dis fucking missed." You must be using your Commander voice because he flinches, salutes and _finally_ fucks off. You really need to talk to Nepeta, that's some shitty fucking discipline happening there.

You turn back to Torion. "As-yet unknown?"

He scowls more than he already was, but he puts the clipboard away at least. "He won't let anyone close enough to examine him. I don't want to risk injuring him further with physical restraints, and we don't have anything strong enough to put a purpleblood under safely."

Whiiiich means it's up to you. Goodbye hot meal and warm coon. Maybe you can squeeze in a cold shower before you have to face the paperwork again. Torion's looking at you like he doesn't  _ want  _ to ask you to do the magical thing where you talk to someone until they fucking trust you, which most of the trolls you consider hatefriends call 'Black Majyyks' and you call 'being not a fucking asshole', but he's going to ask you to do the thing anyway. "Fucking fine," you sigh, and rake your claws through your hair. "Get me a bottle of fucking trollynol, a coffee, and directions to his block." He looks like he's going to protest the coffee, but thinks better of it and pulls out his palmhusk instead.

A few seconds of rapid typing later, he sets off at that weird brisk walk doctorturers seem to have patented. At least no one ever jumps out of  _ your  _ way quite so quickly without also pissing their pants a little. "Your undead abomination will meet us en route"

"Kanaya's not- you know what? It ’ s not worth it." You don't want to get involved in the medical department's weird interquadrental olympics. "You realize she's your direct superior, not your secreterrorist, right?" he waves his hand at you dismissively. "You realize  _ I'm  _ your direct superior, right?" another wave. You give up. You don't have the energy for this.

*  *  *

Coffee and painkillers secured, both doctorturers dismissed to find something useful to do, you take a minute outside Makara's door to plan your angle of attack. It's been a while since you've had one of these talks. It's not like you have a whole lot of freshly-pupated wrigglers to beat into soldiers anymore. Still. It can't be  _ that  _ different, right? Right. Okay. Let's do this.

One of the guards moves like he's going to stop you from opening the door. You give him a Look. He snaps back to attention where he fucking belongs. You square your shoulders and stride into the block like you own the place, which you actually fucking do.

At first you think it's empty, and you're momentarily pissed that they managed to lose a half-starved, injured troll that can probably run about as fast as a legless grub. Then you hear a choked, cut-off sound and you realize he's crouched in the corner of the block, arms wrapped around his thorax. It doesn't look comfortable. And he's still got his fucking collar on. You're going to have to kick someone's ass over that. It should've been off nights ago. "I guess you won't wanna come out of there?" he snarls at you. Shit. He's half fucking feral at this point, his eyes are a solid orange tinged red at the edges. Poor bastard. You try to keep anything but vague boredom off your face. You shrug, "suit yourself." See man? No agenda here, you're not pissed or happy that he's like this, no real emotion at all. Any inconvenient guilt or anger that this happened while he was  _ technically  _ under your care is buried as deep as you can get it.

You tug the chair over, spin it around and sit on it backwards. You've been reliably informed you're significantly less threatening and more ridiculous when you're sitting backwards on a chair. "So I've got this list here of shit I'm supposed to check you out for, courtesy of the doctorturers." you wiggle your tablet at him. The snarling gets louder. It sounds kinda painful. "Okay, cool." you say, like he responded with actual words. "Item the first, you've got some fractured ribs," you move to get up, "supposed to figure out if they're all the way broken now-"

" _ Don't you motherfucking touch me. _ "  He gets halfway to his feet, hands twisted into claws, before he stops, gasping and clutching his side. "Motherfucking- just. Keep the fuck back _." _

You freeze. He sounds absolutely panicked. Fuck. Right. The Condesce kind of implied some shit. Absolutely preposterous shit that no one who knows you would even consider taking seriously, but this kid doesn't know you. Stupid fucking Karkat, forgetting that. You put your hands up and sit back down slowly. "Okay." you say quietly. "No touching." Fuck, he's shaking. He must be  _ terrified.  _ You're so much bigger than him, and he's hurt, and he thinks you're here to- You feel sick. You're such utter trash. You are  _ so fucking pissed  _ that this is something that's happening. "That was stupid of me." See? You can admit fault. "If I get a doctorturer in here later, do you think you can let him take a look at you?" you work to keep your voice even and low. He looks at you suspiciously for a long minute before he jerks his head down. "Gonna take that as a yes." another head-jerk. You tap out a quick message to Torion to be on standby for an examination. "'Till then." You shift so you can drape your crossed arms over the back of the chair, trying to keep your posture relaxed. "We've got some shit to talk about." He's gone  _ really  _ fucking still. You really hope he doesn't  _ stay  _ this scared of you, that'd be really fucking annoying. "Pay attention, this shit's important, okay?"

He doesn't respond, he's too busy looking at you like you're a fucking shadowdropper that crawled out from behind his coon to eat his face off. You take that as permission to keep talking. "First things first. Let ’ s get something the fuck out of the way," really should have done this the first fucking night. "Whatever sick implications the Condesce left you with, I have absolutely zero concupiscent interest in your scrawny ass. First of all, that's not fucking how shit works here. Second of all, you're like, six."

No response, he just keeps staring at you, trembling a little. He looks really pale. "Hey, asshole, are you listening?" he's not growling anymore, "Makara!" you bark. He twitches a little, blinks slowly at you. A sinking suspicion in your pan, you stand up. He doesn't track your movement at all, but he does snarl weakly at you as he sways. "God  _ fucking  _ damnit." you cross the space between you and the corner in one long stride, catching him before he can fall on his stupid fucking face. He swipes at you and you smack his hand away as you help ease him down to the floor. "No don't fucking claw me you idiot, you're going to break something." you don't bother fending him off after that, his claws are so brittle, they won't do much more than ruin your clothes. He hardly manages to hit you anyway, his eyes are unfocused, pupils blown wide. You're not really trained as a medic, but you know how to take someone's pulse at least, and his is weak and rapid. You curse. "Hey!" fuck, you don't remember the guards' names. "One of you get the fuck in here!" When the door opens, you don't wait for them to ask questions, you just start throwing out orders. "Get Torion, he should be on the way, but we're gonna need him here as fast as fucking possible. Tell him Makara's semi-conscious, in pretty fucking severe pain, weak pulse, do whatever the fuck he tells you to do." He hesitates and you snarl at him, wordless and pissed-off. He disappears from the doorway.

"Makara, hey," you turn back to him. Fuck, what was his name? You've just been thinking of him as Makara "Uh, what was it, Gamzee?" he doesn't respond, "Makara, stay awake, man. You wanna tell me how bad you're hurt? Where?" No response. You grab his shoulder and shake him gently. "Come on, we can help you better if you focus. Makara?"

*  *  *

You're not feeling so great. Chest feels like you just fought a motherfucking psionic, which you guess you might've kinda motherfucking did. You press yourself more into your corner, eyes trained on the door. The brown motherfucker was in earlier, but you clawed at him 'till he went away again. You're not letting anyone at you. Not while you're hurt and dizzy and you didn't  _ think  _ you hit your head, but maybe you did? You fight to keep yourself upright as there's brisk footsteps outside the block. If someone's coming to cull you, you're gonna meet them standing.

Everything gets washed cold and clear with horror when the motherfucking master of the place barges in, eyes sharp and proprietary as he surveils the block and his eyes light on you. Motherfuck. You figured someone low enough to get near you wouldn't be so motherfucking important he'd be important to  _ him _ . Or maybe not. Maybe he's just pissed his property's all motherfucking vicious and shit. He says something you can't hear over the roaring in your ears. You snarl at him. He looks kinda motherfucking bored as he shrugs and flips the chair around to sit in it backwards. He looks real motherfucking stupid that way. When he's up and about he's got the look about him, like he's real motherfucking good with whatever's in his strifedeck, and he's got the bulk to back him up, tall as you and the kind of muscles you get from doing real shit. But when he settles himself over the back of the chair and wiggles his tablet at you, saying something 'bout doctorturers, he looks less like a soldier, not much, just, a soldier you don't think sits on a chair like that.

'Course then he goes to get up, moves like he's coming at you, and you're on your feet, snarling a warning and ready to give as good as you get, for all your side lights on fire all up and down it, and your belly is one bright knot of pain, like you ate something bad, only you haven't. It  _ hurts so much motherfucking more _ when you're standing up. The emperor's backing off, you only barely register it 'cause the effort of standing up is making you sway and the block spins around you. You hear something 'bout doctorturers again, all turned up at the end like a question. You try and focus. Said something 'bout a doctorturer in here? You don't wanna let anyone at you while you're all hurt and shit, but you hurt  _ so motherfucking bad. _ You jerk your head down in a nod, hoping that's the answer that'll make it stop hurting, and he asks something else, and you jerk your head again. Sure, sure, whatever, motherfucker, just make it  _ stop.   _

You lose track of reality for a minute there, but suddenly there's hands on you, no matter how you motherfucking fight them, and an irritated voice nearby. Someone's calling your name and shaking you, but your eyes refuse to focus long enough to make sense of anything. There's hands lifting and settling you somewhere, and then the floor lifts up under you and you flail out 'cause you dunno what the fuck's going on, but there's a rough, warm hand on your shoulder and someone somewhere saying, "We got you, it's going to be fine." 

 

*  *  *

When you come 'round, your mouth tastes like chemicals, and there's a steady beeping off to the side. It's not the first time you found yourself in the infirmary with no motherfucking idea how you got there. If you lie real motherfucking still and keep your eyes closed, you can almost pretend you're home, and when you open your eyes it'll be Kurloz there, wearing that frown that says you're gonna get shouted at again, soon as he's sure you won't break in half. Or maybe a couple of your older brothers, passing around bottles and sprawled all over each other and waiting to give you shit for whatever stupid thing got you put in this shallow coon with its thick medical-grade sopor.

Messiahs ain't kind enough to grant you the delusion, though, and there's nothing but resigned disappointment when you open your eyes to see a plain mud-brown ceiling instead of the vibrantly painted church infirmary. You gotta pause a moment and blink hard 'cause it hits you again, real hard, that ceiling and those walls ain't motherfucking there no more, and you won't ever wake up and see them again. You swallow down the mourning in your throat and take stock of yourself instead. Your chest don't hurt near so bad as it did, but your pan's doing the floaty thing that means someone's dosed you up with the good shit, so probably you're still hurt. You move carefully, one wrist's strapped up out of the sopor with a needle in it, but the other's free for you to make roam over your side 'till it finds the little bristle-prickle of stitching along your thoracic struts. You don't remember getting stabbed, so something else must've happened. Your guts don't hurt when you poke at them, no more than usual anyhow.

You're so tired, you almost just close your eyes again, let yourself slip back into the quiet where you don't gotta think. But there's the rustling of clothes and a rough voice goes "Hey, you awake?"

Trying to sit up is a mistake. You dunno  _ why  _ it pulls at your stitches, but it does, and it sucks. When you've settled yourself back down against the incline of the coon and finished whimpering pained curses at yourself, you roll your head over to look at who the fuck is hanging around when anyone who'd worry at your stupid ass is dead and rotting.

It's the motherfucking Emperor. An unconscious growl starts up in your throat, but to be real honest, you're so tired, and whatever drug they put in you is making everything swirly and stupid, so your growls are halfhearted at best. He's not even looking at you anyway. He's scowling down at his little tablet and scribbling furiously on it with a stylus. After a minute his eyes flick back up to you. "How are you feeling?"

What? "What?" What's he care? What's he doing here? What the fuck happened? "Motherfucking- _ What?" _

He finishes whatever he was writing and sets the tablet aside. "You were bleeding into your thorax." He shrugs, "Wouldn't've been a problem if you'd let someone fucking  _ examine  _ you instead of parading around your block like a moron that doesn't understand how to sleep in a fucking coon, or stop moving when injured but." He climbs to his feet and you tense, but he just goes to the door and sticks his head out to shout something into the hall. You watch him warily until he settles back down on his chair. "So I don't know all the medical bullshit, because I'm not a fucking doctorturer, but essentially, you lost a lot of blood, passed the fuck out, and we brought you to the med department. We don't exactly have a store of indigo-purple handy, so they like, recycled what they could? Something like that. I'm not clear on the details. You're gonna feel like shit for a while, but you'll live." You just stare at him a minute, blinking slowly. That sure what a whole lot of motherfucking shit he just said. He frowns at you, brow all furrowed, and snaps his fingers 'till you twitch and glare at him. He relaxes minutely, "Fuck, don't  _ do  _ that." he snaps. "I thought you were passing out out again, holy shit." He scrubs his hand over the back of his head, "So yeah. How are you feeling? Any pain?"

"The fuck they dose me with?" you ask instead of answering. It doesn't  _ feel  _ like sopor, but you wanna be sure all the same. Maybe you really are dreaming, or you died and this is your punishment for dying without your face on, 'cause this is too motherfucking weird to be real. Might as well go with it 'till you find your way to the carnival.

"No fucking idea. Our usual shit isn't rated for highbloods, but you were already pretty weak. I think Kanaya mixed something experimental up for you, you'd have to ask her."

Well, probably ain't sopor then. Not that you can tell with the motherfucking suppressors still bolted on. "Kay." you say, and slide a little deeper into the sopor. "Ain't you got like. Emperor shit as needs done?" your traitor mouth says without you making it move. Maybe they gave you yerba. Always did make you a talky little shit, yerba buena.

He snorts. "I have an endless mountain of 'emperor shit'." He actually does the finger crumbs, who the fuck actually does that shit anymore? "I'm also one of the few unlucky bastards who can do most of his work from the comfort of this fucking chair, while also being competent enough to not somehow injure you further, so I get guard duty until someone else I can trust shows up."

That's just motherfucking stupid. "Bro, I ain't going any motherfucking where just now." you wiggle the wrist strapped to the side of the coon, making the drip-tube shake. You should probably be terrified, backsassing the motherfucker as owns you, but whatever drug they put in you just makes you tired as fuck and more than a little stupid.

"It's not to keep you here, dumbass." he says, sounding all aggravated. "The matesprit of that troll you fucked up is still on a rampage. I'm not fucking taking chances until I figure out what the asshole is capable of, and how much insubordination I'm willing to tolerate before I reassign him to a fucking beefgrub brooding pit." Oh. You kinda motherfucking forgot about him. He looks up and something on your face gives him a funny look on his. "He's fine, by the way, because you asked." did you ask? You dunno. Maybe he's being sarcastic. You guess you're glad you didn't cull no one you didn't mean to cull? "His matesprit's just a self-important douche."

Before you can think of a response the brownblood that tried coming at you before bustles in and checks you over with the same kind of efficient briskness the rainbowdrinker did, scolds you for being a stupid motherfucker, which you already knew and don't need him telling you, and sticks a little needle into the drip-tube that makes your arm go kinda cold. He's rounding on the emperor to deliver a scold there too, but the world's going all fuzzy and shit again, so you don't get to hear what he's getting scolded for, which you're kinda sad about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently the consistent attention of posting as I write is a ridiculous motivator. Things really will for real slow down now, though, as I try and figure out what the fuck is going on in the next chapter. Things. Things are what's going on in the next chapter. 
> 
> Until then; it turns out I am _really fucking bad_ at replying to comments here. I wanted to reply to everyone individually, but that's probably not actually going to happen. So questions or whatever you want to be actually answered might be better directed to my spiffy new [fandom/writing tumblr.](http://technicalchaotic.tumblr.com/) General response though, I am completely and entirely blown away by the number of people apparently reading and enjoying this. I love y'all so much you have no idea. I haven't written this consistently since I was a bitty little tween, it's fantastic. 
> 
> As usual thanks for reading, and if you see any mistakes, typos, whatever, please let me know.


	4. Get Better

Nights pass in long, drippy, stretched-out periods of awake and asleep. Your body, unused to sopor and worn down to nothing, demands rest so often you scarcely have time to be bored. The emperor is in his little uncomfy looking chair when you wake, more often than not. He's always got his tablet to glare and grumble at, and you think his tale about being a guard for you is a load of musclebeast shit, 'till you notice he always looks up minutes before the door opens, and he's always got his specibus equipped and at the ready. You wonder if there's anyone actually motherfucking after you, or if he's being paranoid.

After a time you're not sure of, the brownblood stops giving you the little injections into your driptube. You far prefer the syrupy, drippy panfog to the dull ache that comes when that happens _._ It grips you 'round the thorax in iron bands, 'specially when the brownblood or the rainbowdrinker come and admonish you to breathe deep and steady 'till you lose your patience and snarl or swipe at them. The Emperor is there for most of those times, but he never says a single motherfucking thing at you or at them, just scribbles furiously on his tablet and growls to himself. Worse than the pain is the dragging exhaustion that the rainbowdrinker says in patient tones is only to be expected when you lose as much blood as you did. You hate it, near as much as you hate the rainbowdrinker's predatory kindness and the brownblood's impersonal harshness, and the bland, tasteless food they bring you, and the emperor's constant grumbling presence, and every other motherfucking thing.

When you've been awake long enough and often enough to count what you think is three nights,  you are allowed to very carefully slide yourself out of the medical recupracoon, and make your own wobbly way, _finally_ unassisted by psionics or the unflappable hands of a rainbowdrinker, to the loadgaper. You get back to your coon and don't even resent the little set of steps that fold out for you to climb back into the thick gel. You are asleep again before you're even all the way in the sopor.

Probably you should be more frustrated than you are, with the constant pull of sleep, the eternal exhaustion when you are awake. But there are benefits to sopor that you'd forgotten in two sweeps of sleeping dry, and with the nightmares banished by merciful slime, you have discovered something _miraculous._

When you dream, they aren't dead.

Kurloz was your first schoolfeeder, first weaponsmaster, first real motherfucking brother. Tall as a mountain and whipcord lean, menacing in his armor and wholly motherfucking different in his cloth, your ancestor was like as to be a legend made real just for you. He helped you through the shakes. Sat with you on long days spent with your head in a loadgaper, emptying a belly already empty, rubbing your back and making soothing noises. Read scripture to you when the chills made you shake too hard to leave your warm slime. Caught you up by the scruff and dropped you in a pile with a firm scowl when he caught you still eating it, even with the bitterest powders mixed in.

When you have to be awake, you see his corpsemeat in your pan, horns shattered, face unmarred but scrubbed shamefully bare, his thorax a ruin of gore. You try and distract yourself, with prayer, with hymns mouthed without voice, but never with any real hope of forgetting. When you escape into sleep though, there is only his rough hand on your shoulder, his voice a low rasp as he guides your arm in the proper movement and explains the how and why, there is only his face in its proper paint twisted in ecstasy, his voice an echoing bellow as he delivers a sermon of blood and fury and celebration.

There are others too, nearly as important. Rundas who taught you to juggle, crippled Nujall who schoolfed you chucklevoodoos and the art of them. Istmun and Kalton, nearest you in age and hatefriends as dear as any quadrant. Mariam who pierced your ears for you with carved-bone needles from your first cull, who painted the sign of holy Rage over your shoulders in needle-pricks and inks. So long as your pan drifts in dreaming, they breathe and speak, dance and fight and _live._

*  *  *

He sleeps a _lot._ Kanaya says it's normal. Even when he's awake he's hardly coherent. Most of the time he doesn't pay much attention to you or anyone else, he just stares up at the ceiling and mouths words to himself. You usually can't hear anything, but you can see his lips moving as he talks to himself or whatever the fuck he's doing. You spend a lot of your waking hours in his medblock, even after you dropkick the injured guard _and_ his matesprit to a completely separate base. Some of your officers throw shitfits about it, something about lost efficiency and favoritism or something. Unfortunately for them, your shitfits are louder and more impressive than theirs, and also you're the fucking general of this whole goddamned disgrace of an army. Maybe it's the change of scenery. Maybe it's because no one drops in to 'ask you one quick thing'. Maybe it's because you can't play dronesweeper when you don't have your husktop, and you have to actually _do_ your paperwork. Whatever the reason, you seem to get more work done here.

So there's not a lot of incentive for you _not_ to keep pulling guard duty for Makara, at least until he's recovered enough to interview. You get a lot of paperwork done, read a metric fuckton of backdated reports, start compiling your own file on your guest. Makara's initial threat assessments are pretty low. Kanaya and Terezi both agree that the suppressors on his horns imply he's got indigo-typical mindfuckery going on, but until Kanaya figures out how to get them off, there's not a lot of point in worrying about it. The guards who've dealt with him in person, barring obvious exceptions, generally report submissive, subdued behavior. You're kind of interested to see how the latest incident changed anyone's opinion, but considering he's currently passed out in the med wing, you think it's probably safe to say he's not up to fighting trim at the moment. Everyone else seems to have exactly the same opinion as you; weak and sickly, probably won't survive long before he gets himself culled, probably not a secret seadweller spy to sabotage you for the Empress.

Of course you _are_ the idiot that has to herd all these fucking purrbeast, so you can't laze around in Makara's medblock all night _every_ night. Which is why you find yourself making a trek through the complex to the legislacerator barracks. Terezi trolled you hours ago that she _finally_ had some kind of news about Makara's legal status, and for all you _hate_ coming to this part of the complex, you tell yourself it'll be worth it to finally have confirmation that you're not personally responsible for the care and feeding of an actual living troll anymore.

It's not worth it, of course, because when is your life ever that fucking simple? There's a full six-way strife happening in the main meetingblock. Of course there is. And Terezi's perched in her chair watching it like a highblood at a coliseum, because why not? You walk through the door _just_ enough to activate the perimeter chime and wait. Somehow she manages, with the liberal application of her cane to shins, horns, and heads, to turn the writhing mass of teal-and-red combatants into half a dozen fully adult trolls, each one a good ten fucking sweeps older than her, and not even half as terrifying. Fucking desk jockeys.

"Karkles!" she crows as she comes to a stop precisely in front of you. "Imagine seeing _you_ here!" She herds you out of the room. You hear the fighting start up again as the door swings shut. "Don't mind them," she says before you can ask, "They're debating the definition of 'appropriate court attire'." You're not even remotely surprised.

"Just tell me what was so fucking urgent that you needed me to come all the way down here." you couldn't give two shits about how she chooses to run her legislacerators. As long as shit gets done in something resembling a timely manner. Which you can't say it has yet. You should probably rethink some of your administrative appointments.

You don't expect her to drop the manic razor-edged grin and frown at you for a minute. "We should probably talk about somewhere more private." Well, fuck. That's never good. You let Terezi lead you through the halls to her office. It looks about the same as her hive did as a wriggler; random patches of bright color and shit scattered across the floor. "As you know," She starts as she navigates it all effortlessly toward the table at the end, where dozens of antique books are stacked and scattered around. "Our laws are, as a general rule, taken wholesale from our former empire. The usual process for freeing slaves is simple. The legal owner, usually a highblood, declares his intention to free his slave, pays a nominal licensing fee, and the former slave is restored as a citizen of the empire and afforded an age and caste-appropriate stipend or position." She beckons you over to the table, moving her fingers carefully over the dull leather covers until she finds the one she's looking for. "But there's a hidden clause in the law _specifically_ excluding, and I quote, 'convicted criminals, enemies of the empire, outcaste trolls, and clowns.'" She opens the book, leans forward with her tongue out before she pauses with a scowl and shoves the book at you instead. "Cleareye is so fucking particular with his collection. Page six hundred and twelve if you don't mind."

You take the book and flip through to the right page. It's all tiny dense text you're pretty sure she isn't even remotely capable of reading. "Why are you even fucking around with these antiques? Sollux built us a complete digital database before we got cut off from the imperial network." You're confused about why this clause is a problem until you realize that if he's not an imperial spy, he's probably an enemy of the empire, to get himself into this kind of situation.

"The information in these books has been redacted since before _Cleareye_ was a grub." She slips an earpiece on and holds her palmhusk camera over the page with a grumble. "If he wasn't a stuffy old busybody with an unhealthy obsession with antique legal texts, we would be more lost with the treaties than we already are. Hah! Here." She passes the book to you. "We're not part of the empire anymore, so obviously the empress won't condescend to grant him a pardon, whatever he's done to get on her bad side."

She goes on, but you ignore her while you squint at the tiny print. Most of it is in some kind of old Alternian, but what you _can_ understand is about what Terezi just told you. Slaves can be freed by order of their legal owner, the Empress, or an appropriate representative of the empire, blah blah. What gives you pause are the clauses about the exceptions. You frown. "I have no fucking idea what it's trying to say here." you point without thinking.

"Hmm." Terezi says drily, "I _see,”_ You flush and scowl, but you read it out loud for her, stumbling over the pronunciation. "Essentially, Mr. Bitter Cherry Cough Syrup," she starts when you're done, her weary tone putting you on edge, "Slaves that meet the listed exceptions cannot have their citizenship restored without an Imperial pardon."

"Can't we just, I don't know, change the fucking law?" the whole reason this stupid rebellion happened was to get out from under the insane imperial laws.

She feigns shock with a little gasp and a hand to her chest. _"Karkat._ You can't just _change a law."_ You roll your eyes, about to retort, but before you can she sobers, "Even if we did, we can't expect the Condesce to respect it, and we already _know_ she's looking for a reason to renew hostilities."

Ugh. Fuck. She's right. You hate that she's right, but she's definitely right. "Can't we at least take the fucking collar off?" You _really_ hate that collar. It bothers you on a personal level, and you doubt Makara feels any better about it.

" _You_ can take the fucking collar off." she says, "When _you_ convince him to let someone come near him with a sharp implement."

You're going to snap back at her, irritated that she's essentially dumping this whole problem in your lap, but the emergency ringtone on your palmhusk goes off, and you automatically cut yourself off. "Vantas." You're expecting another Vriska Problem, or a dispute between departments, or some other brainlessly simple bullshit 'only you' can deal with.

You're not expecting the panicked babbling of one of your officers, protesting "was only like ten fucking seconds," and "He was sleeping I fucking _swear_."

"Calm the hell down and use full fucking sentences." You snap, "I can't understand what the fuck you're trying to say." You peek at the caller ID. Aargas Pescal. High olive, your memory supplies, ruffiannihilator, fantastic record, dependable. You don't know him personally, but he came highly recommended.

He takes an audible breath and you roll your eyes. "Your purpleblood, sir." Your blood runs cold, "I was only gone for like ten fucking seconds, he was asleep, I fucking swear, but by the time I got back..." he pauses meaningfully and you growl a warning. "We're sweeping the med wing, he can't have gone far-" You hang up. Your palmhusk goes into your sylladex, your strifedeck gets set to standby, and by the time you register that you're moving, you're already sprinting for the door, ignoring Terezi's shouted questions.

*  *  *

They don't find him on the first sweep of the med wing, or the second, because you apparently employ a bunch of hopeless morons instead of trained soldiers. You organize search parties to cover the surrounding wings, to the radius Torion _swears_ is the limit Makara could conceivably cover on his own power. You're planning on taking one more sweep of the med wing by yourself, when a thought strikes you. "Did anyone check the courtyard?" The guilty pause tells you all you need to know. You resist the urge to slap yourself in the face. "You're all fucking fired."

"The sun rose _hours_ ago." someone protests.

You point at him without turning, " _Extra_ fired." The med wing exits directly into the courtyard on three sides. It's mostly Kanaya who deals with it, but you've been told trolls in long-term recovery enjoy spending evenings or aftermidnights out there in the greenery. It's a tangled maze of topiary and trees and whatever else Kanaya can convince to grow, and it _should've_ been the first place anyone looking for a missing patient would look. You growl and run your claws through your hair, tugging a little. "Well?" you snap, "You all have your assignments. Get fucking moving." they don't jump to leave as quickly as you'd like, but it's still only a minute or two until you're alone in the hallway.

You gear up from the closet by the external door; heavy, hooded floor-length coat, headwrap, UV goggles. From what you can see as you squint up at the sky, it's an overcast day. Not _quite_ as deadly, if he's managed to find some shade. You captchalogue a spare coat for Makara and set out along the garden paths.

You don't notice it at first. It takes a few minutes for your ears to register the sound of smothered, hitching breath over the rustling of leaves and the crunch of your feet on the gravel path. You pause, listening. He must have noticed you first, because the breathing stops entirely as you stand still and listen. You start moving again, circling back and forth. It makes sense he's hiding, he's been nothing but suspicious and terrified of you and your people from the beginning, and as far as he knows, he's had good reason to be. On maybe the third circuit of the garden, you finally see where he must've left the path. Just a smeared footprint in the moist soil and some broken branches. You peek through the gap in the plants. A set of purple-rimmed eyes glare back at you.

He's packed himself into the little space between the garden wall and a massive ceramic pot. You drop down to crouch at eye-level, "You really like small spaces." you remark mildly. He takes a shuddering breath and hisses at you. He has that look you used to call the 'dead lusus' face, because past you was a raging douchebag. You've seen it a million times on cadets fresh from their first battle, shaking through the realities of war, and the realization that glory for the empire doesn't mean shit for the lowbloods doing all the work. It's been a while since it was even remotely your responsibility to deal with, though. Even most of your trainees had _some_ battle experience, and the first few weeks of deployment are always full of new pale hookups and quadrants, so there was almost never anyone left alone like this poor kid, shaking, and terrified and _furious_ about it.

At least he's in the shade. You flop down to sit in the gravel and decaptchalogue the spare coat, holding it out to him wordlessly. He doesn't take it, just keeps glaring at you like you offered him a small horrorterror or some shit. You sigh and shake it at him a little bit. "Come on, man. You're not a rainbowdrinker. Put on the fucking coat." He's in the shade, but you can still see the angry purple flush to his face, and you're pretty sure sunburn isn't _great_ for recovering from blood loss. He reaches out slowly, wincing as the plates on his arm shift against the burned skin around them, and snatches the coat out of your hand. You wait while he puts it on, but he doesn't bother with sleeves, he just drapes it over his head. "So, can you walk?" It's hard to tell when he's covered almost entirely in fabric, but you think he's relaxing a little with the heavy cloth draped over him. When you talk, though, he tenses right back up again. He doesn't respond either, just growls a little and shrinks back into the corner. "Can you _talk?_ " You can't tell if he's being stubborn or if he's just _that_ freaked out.

"The fuck kinda stupid-ass motherfucking question is that all supposed to be?" You should've brought some water, his voice sounds horrible. Ugh. You thought you left lususing braindead wrigglers behind when you got promoted out of sergeant, but you guess the urge never really leaves you.

"The valid kinda stupid-ass motherfucking question. You're not really a talkative guy." He glares at you, but his breath is starting to steady out, and his voice sounds bad, but it's not that horrible watery about-to-cry bad. The attack must be just about over by now, good. You're _really_ shitty at dealing with the tears stage. "So, _can_ you walk? Because you said you don't want me touching you, and it's gonna be getting pretty fucking hot out here soon."

*  *  *

You got no idea what's going on. You woke out of a dream you don't wanna remember, stumbled out of your coon struck with the feeling of wrongness and the need to get _gone._ Moving mechanically, deliberately, fighting the trembling of your chest, you stripped bits of machine off you, meant to monitor and fuck knows what else. Your arm throbbed when you tugged at the line going to the inside of your elbow, so you bit through the tube instead, face wrinkling at the bitter taste of whatever was getting put in you. It was dark and cool when you stumbled out of the building and into fresh air that smelled of green and growing things, and there was a nice cool corner to press into, and as you curled into yourself and tried to lie to yourself that you were _safe,_ you couldn't stop the humiliating sob that fought its way free of your throat, or the shaking hitching gasps of breath as you tried to fight back the hopeless terror that crashed over you.

Now, though, facing this weird-ass freakblood sitting in the dirt like it ain't no thing, talking at you as casually as he hands you a cloak to keep off the sun, and asks if you can walk like that's a thing to question, you're embarrassed and pissed that he found you hiding and crying like a wriggler for reasons you don't even _know,_ and scared he's gonna get to yelling at you, that he's gonna break that facade of calm and there's gonna be a beating or worse, 'cause you up and motherfucking left where he put you, and you been told to stay there. And then your stupid motherfucking tongue, sharpened by pain and exhaustion, is sassing at him, and he's sassing you right the fuck back, and asking again if you can walk, making like you saying you don't want him touching you holds any kinda weight. And you wish he'd just drop the trap already 'cause you're so motherfucking _tired,_ and you wanna know what's wanted of you.

"Why the fuck would I be giving a flying motherfucking shit about that?" you finally say, for all your voice holds no fire anymore. Maybe if you piss him off enough, he'll just come at you, and you can end this stupid act. At the very least, you can make him come in here after you if it bothers him so bad, you being out in the sun, and you can claw him up some before he gets his fangs in you.

"Well, as far as I know, colder hues can't take the heat as well as warmer-blooded trolls." he says, all reasonable like you're chatting on the weather. "I mean _I'm_ fine, I run hot, but I kind of think you should probably be somewhere a little cooler before you pass out." There's a pointed pause. "Again." You bristle and don't respond.

He don't talk any after that, just tucks his heel against his knee like he's all at motherfucking ease with you being where you are, fishes his palmhusk out of his coat, and fiddles with it while the silence stretches out between the two of you. It feels like hours of waiting and letting the anticipation build up in your chest before you finally burst out, "The fuck do you _want_?"

"I wouldn't mind some cooler air." he says at you all mild and reasonable. You make a strangled, helpless sound, 'cause you are _tired_ , and your _chest_ hurts, and you are so motherfucking sick to your death of having to guess at what the motherfuckers around you are wanting of you, and he _knows_ that, the bastard, and maybe this is some sick motherfucking way of courting you pitch, maybe, your pan thinks desperately, this is how he wants to play this roll the fishbitch gave you to him for. You kinda wanna cry some more, but you refuse to do that while _he's_ here.

You realize he's looked up from his palmhusk and has his face pointed at you. "I'm fucking this up." he says, finally, and you can't tell from the sound of his voice what face he's making. You hunch your shoulders and swallow, and don't say anything, "Fuck, I'm _really_ fucking this up." You don't know what to do with this, so you don't do anything. "Look, Makara." he hesitates, "This is the _worst_ venue for this conversation, you realize that, right? Are you _sure_ you don't want to go inside?" After a few minutes, you shake your head minutely. You wanna stay right the fuck here, where he ain't in arm's reach of you. He groans and runs his hand over his head, pushing back his hood a little, so his hair's peeking out. "Fucking- fine." he sounds less happy than he did before, and you tense. "So here's the situation. I'm not fucking interested in a slave. I don't want one. You don't want to be one. I don't think there's a conflict there, right? Right." he plows on without waiting for you to answer. You weren't gonna anyway but you still bristle at the presumption. "But there's some kind of legal bullshit that says you have to either stay here, or go back to the Condesce so-"

" _No."_ Your throat protests the shouting, but you can't stop the visceral, _violent_ reaction, like you even have a motherfucking choice. Here is confusing, is terrifying, is a million rules you don't know, a thousand punishments that never happen, but _there_ is starvation, is beatings whether you've earned them or not, is a cruel pink-painted smile and a daintily clawed hand on the back of your neck, playing at familiarity as you are shown what befell them who defied as you did, without what little worth lies in your name. "Please, I-I'll mind, stay where I'm motherfucking put, 'm sorry, won't fuck up this time I motherfucking _swear._ " There's something in the quality of his posture that makes you think he's staring at you. You shut the fuck up.

He takes a slow, deep breath, holds it a minute, and you got no motherfucking idea what's going on, but you've just figured out you oughtn’t talk so you don't say anything. "Holy fuck." you hunch your shoulders a little, "Okay, no. No, don't fucking freak out, calm down, you're not going anywhere. _Breathe,_ you moron." You take a startled breath. You hadn't even realized you weren't. "That solves one problem." he don't sound happy about it, so you keep right where you are, kinda huddled. "Wait, no. Verbal confirmation. Given the choice, you'd prefer to stay here?"

You think he's waiting for a response, and he said verbal, so you say, real cautious, "yeah."

He nods, like he expected that. "Now that we've established that I'm not going to deport you, if I promise I have _zero_ interest in your undersized ass, concupiscent or otherwise, can we please go inside and finish this conversation indoors like reasonable trolls?"

Its news to you, and you dunno if you believe him all the way, but under threat of getting sent back to the fishqueen, you find you ain't so quick to want to piss him off. "Sure thing, motherfucker." you say at him all reluctant, and creep forward until you can try getting to your feet.

Your head don't like being upright so much, and you sway dangerously 'till a sturdy shoulder appears to catch yourself on. "Dumbass. _Say_ something if you need help." he grumbles at you, and you'd let go and stumble away, but you think if you try you'll fall over, and he ain't touching you any more than he needs to, just bracing you with all the solid weight of him 'till the dizzy spell passes and you can ease your hand off him without going over. "Come on, let’s get you into a chair before you kill yourself." He nods his head over to the door, and you hitch the coat over your shoulders a little more firm and let him lead you back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That took _way_ longer than I wanted it to take orz, communication is _hard_
> 
> As usual, please let me know if I missed any tags, typos, or warnings, and thank you so much for reading!


	5. Communication is hard and nobody understands

He takes you through hallways, watching you sidelong like he thinks you can't tell he's looking. You dunno if he thinks you're gonna go for him or if he's just watching for you to fall again. You're tired as fuck, your hide all itching and tight where the sun got it. You used to spend  _ hours _ throwing your brothers around the training fields, and now you can't hardly shuffle 'round like an aged and crippled lusus. You keep your grumbles to yourself, though, watching this emperor through the corner of your eye for signs he's gonna change his mind about what he said 'bout not having any motherfucking interest in you.

The meetingblock he takes you to ain't small, nor private, nor any motherfucking thing to set you on edge, but the stark plainness of the place sets you on edge all the same, even as he goes and drops himself into a chair and motions at the other seat across the table "Take a seat," If you obey without thought, it's only 'cause you're not trying to piss him off more. It's got nothing to do with the trembling of your limbs or the dragging tiredness that's plagued you since you woke up in his medblock. You sit there, and for a long minute, he just looks back at you, face all pinched in a scowl that strikes you more thinky than pissy. He sighs and scrubs a hand over his head. You wonder if his hair goes like that of its own whim and mirth or if it gets put that way with all his head-scrubbing he does. "Fuck. I should've done this  _ weeks _ ago, sorry. Shit happens, you know?" he kinda waves at you, like you're all being the shit that happened. Maybe that's kinda being fair.

You shrug at him. "Sure, motherfucker." you got no idea what 'this' is, probably you ain't gonna like it, but you'll play along 'till he makes like to touch you in some way unwanted.

You don't know why your answer makes him wince like it's bothering at him, but so long as he ain't getting his shout on, you don't give a flying fuck on what does and don't bother at him. "So here's how it works." you got no motherfucking idea what 'it' is still, but you figure if he ain't told you by now you're gonna be left to figure it out on your own. "Your legal status is pretty fucking shaky, I'm not gonna lie. Any kind of official paperwork is going to leave you vulnerable to recapture. I've still got my legal team looking for some kind of loophole." He pauses and looks at you like he expects a reaction out of that, "Look, are you understanding any of this? If you're passing out again please fucking tell me." His scowl goes deeper and his brow furrows like he'd be concerned if he weren't pissed about it.

You bristle some, "'m not motherfucking passing out. And I'm not all being a motherfucking idiot neither." you really motherfucking  _ don't _ understand a single thing that's happening, but you don't much feel like admitting that to  _ him. _

He just rolls his eyes at you. "So the short version is as far as anyone in this compound knows or cares, you're a free troll. We'll find something for you to do-" you snarl at him and he holds his hands up all defensive, " _ Not like that _ , fuck, calm down already." You keep looking on him all narrow, but you nod reluctantly for him to keep on. "Like I was _ saying. _ We'll find  _ something _ for you to do. No one gets a free ride here, not even highbloods, but there's always something that needs an extra hand. We'll get you a block you're comfortable with as soon as the doctorturers say you're not going to suddenly start puking blood or what the fuck ever." He hesitates. "Look, I'm not going to say you're restricted to the compound," You snort. You believe that about as much as he means it, which ain't much by the sound of it "but I can't guarantee you  _ won't _ end up right back in the Condesce's hands if you leave."

It ain't near so bad as you expected. Still a slave, still a prisoner, but at least the motherfucker trying at keeping you is letting you pretend at freedom thus far. "And what's this 'something' then, motherfucker?" you ask, 'cause if you weren't all being a slave, you'd be asking after this sort of shit, being all suspicious and shit, and so long as you're pretending you're free and safe, he ain't sending you to the Condesce, and you ain't gotta be reminded of shit you don't wanna be reminded of.  "What plans are you all being to hatch for my own motherfucking self?"

He relaxes some, and you figure you've guessed right. He wants you playing along with this, then play along you will 'till he pushes too far. It's easier that way, gives you time to get some of your strength back if he allows it. "We'll worry about that once you're back on your feet. For now, we'll get you entered into the military system as a general recruit on medical leave." He nods sharply, like he expects you don't got any objections to it. "How do you feel about staying in the block you've been assigned? We don't have a  _ ton _ of private quarters, and I don't know how communal living quarters would go for you."

For a minute you almost think to ask to be put somewhere communal, 'cause 'communal living quarters' puts you in mind of a block shared with brothers, sleepy grumbles and mild curses and gentle cuffs 'round horns and you miss that so much it hurts. But then you remember there's no family here, no family at  _ all _ anymore, and you got no motherfucking desire to share your space with a pack of shitblooded heathens. You shrug. "Got no motherfucking complaints there." you say, neutral as you can. You got a whole motherfucking shitton of complaints, but none as you think he'll give a shit about fixing.

He gives you a hard look but he don't press, just nods and marks something down on his tablet and asks, "Anything you need? The doctorturers want you on a controlled diet for a while, until you can handle normal food, but once they give you the okay, there's a couple of communal mealblocks. Anything else you need, within reason, we can try and get for you." He pauses, fiddling with his stylus. "Is there a  _ reason _ you weren't sleeping in your coon or?" he just lets the question dangle there, and you got your jaw set to refuse to answer when he presses, "The doctorturers don't really want you sleeping dry, either. Shit's more likely to go wrong that way."

Your shoulders are hunched, your chin is tucked to cant your horns forward without you even telling them to. Miracles. You swallow the defensive rumble in your throat, make yourself unbend some and shrug. "Ain't no motherfucking reason. Won't do that no more." You can sleep in it. You did back home all the motherfucking time. Never had any problems with that shit once you got past the shakes. It'll be fine.

He nods slowly, looking at you with those blasphemy-bright eyes all sharp like he's seeing straight through to the untruthful core of you. You hunch up again, not liking how he's looking at you. "Anything else you need?" His voice is patient, firm.

It feels like a test. He wants you asking at shit, for some weird motherfucking reason you can't figure out. You can't think of a single motherfucking thing you want from him. You reach up to scratch the side of your face as you think, to stall for time, skirting the edge of paint that ain't there out of force of habit, and you blurt without even thinking, "Paint." he looks startled, but now you've said it, you're struck with how much you want to wear your proper motherfucking face again. "Like as to cover a face." you say slow. Let this be a test for his own motherfucking self, of his willingness to indulge you. "White most of all, and a shitbit of black." You struggle to keep from your voice how much you want this. "And a sponge and brush for the painting of it."

***

It's been a while since you've done this. It used to be kind of a tradition. Talk to a new soldier, get a feel for their talents, figure out what they needed to do what you needed them to do. There's a reason your cullsquad had one of the lowest mortality rates in the entire goddamned rebellion. You fucking take care of your people is that reason, and whether you like it or not, whether  _ he _ likes it or not, he's one of your people. It feels better thinking about it that way. He's not a soldier, but you're not a sergeant anymore, and if he's one of your people, instead of one of your  _ possessions _ , that's at least something you know how to deal with.

When you ask him what he needs, you don't know what you're expecting. A weapon? A sylladex? You make a mental note to get him kitted out with that shit anyway. For you to get that fucking collar off, maybe.  _ Paint _ is completely out of nowhere. "Like, makeup?" you ask slowly. It's not something you'd call a  _ need, _ really.

He rattles irritably in his throat. "If you  _ gotta _ call it that, sure, motherfucker. Is that all being a thing 'in reason' or no?"

"I can look into it?" You're pretty sure Kanaya either has something or will know where to get it. "Might take a few days."

The way he visibly relaxes is pretty fucking weird. Sure, okay, paint. That's probably an easy enough request to fill if he's  _ that _ hung up on it. "Waterproof 'n soporproof, if it's all being a thing possible." he adds, and you nod and note it down.

"Anything else? Sylladex preference? We have a few standard models available. And you're still on medical restrictions, but if you have a strifekind allocation you prefer, we can see about getting something ordered for you later on."

He frowns at you, mouth screwed to one side. "Uh." he says, "Guess I was all used to having- ugh, what's the motherfucking heathen words for it- Miracle modus, being all like to colors and motherfucking will of the messiahs as to what comes out." he waves his hands in a completely meaningless gesture.

You stare at him. "I don't think we have that one." you make yourself say. This kid can't possibly be as big an idiot as he looks right now. "Do you know how to use an array modus?" You usually have a couple of general-use backpack models collecting dust in storage.

He looks  _ tragically _ disappointed when you say you don't have whatever the fuck he was asking for. "The fuck's an array?" he asks.

Okay. You can foresee no possible problems with this. Fuck. "It's not hard. You'll get the hang of it." you finally say, defeated. "I'll get you a catalogue later if you want to find something less generic."

He doesn't look really happy about that, but you don't honestly expect him to look happy about anything right now. You're settling for 'less angrily distraught'. You even think you might have achieved it; he's talking in full sentences to you. A bizarre mangling of perfectly good Alternian, sure, but he's talking to you with abrupt frankness, and you think you might've managed to do something actually right here. He seems just a little bit less like he's waiting for an execution order.

There's a long moment of silence where he sits chewing his lip fretfully, and you're going to ask him if there's anything else he wants to mention when he says quietly, "Clubs. My strifekind. 's all being clubkind. Jokerkind if it's all being available, but clubkind's what I know best. Motherfucking knew best anyhow."

That's. Unusual. You note down 'jokerkind' to look into later. "I don't know what you mean by clubs, specifically." you admit. "We have a few bludgeonkind users?"

He's shaking his head before you finish talking. "Nah, motherfucker. Light clubs. Like to be juggling and all that shit." he holds his hands apart a little further than shoulder-width, a wry twist to his mouth you can't read. "Batons 'round so long, weight to one end, iron-core wood, by tradition. The better for getting my paint on with."

There's an edge to his words that should probably bother you. Or at least piss you off. For some reason you just feel kinda bad for him. Even when he's trying to unsubtly threaten you, his eyes are darting around the room, reading your mood, judging the distance between you and him and him and the door. It'd be a little impressive if it wasn't you causing it. Poor bastard's still got purple stains around the corners of his eyes, and he's trying to impress you with implications you don't even entirely understand. "I'll see what we can find for you." you promise as you get to your feet. "For now you should probably get back to the medblock. Those burns look nasty."

***

By the time he guides you back to the medblock, you're so tired you're stumbling more than walking. He keeps twitching his hands and darting looks at you, and it puts you on edge so you're bristling and tense when you finally turn through a doorway and you find yourself in the now-familiar medblock. You look at the scowling rainbowdrinker waiting on you with one hand on its hip, and a fresh dripline all hung up on the stand thing, and you maybe cringe a little bit. The emperor snorts and his lips twitch like he's trying to not smile.

"She's not going to eat you, man. You'll be fine." When it shifts its gaze on over to him and darkens further, you're gratified that that half-smirk slips right the fuck off his stupid motherfucking face and he goes 'ulp.' kinda quietly. "So yeah, I've got a fuckton of 'emperor shit' to get done so I'll come see how you're doing later." and then he absconds and you find yourself feeling faintly betrayed.

"Karkat Vantas I'm not  _ fucking _ done with you." it growls as it stalks past you through the door.

You contemplate the empty block and the medical coon, and the raised voices just down the hall.

" _ -Injured and sick! When you put a patient under my care- _ "

" _ Look, I needed to get that shit done already. I gave him a chair what's the big deal-" _

After all this motherfucking contemplation, you decide a nap is in order, and climb your weary way into the coon. If a rainbowdrinker is gonna up and murder the emperor it's no motherfucking chitin off your sniffnub.

***

"Look, he's fine." you wave your hand at the unconscious troll in the coon. You know Kanaya fusses about patients sometimes, but she's going a little overboard right now. She glares at you as she bustles around the coon, setting up the new drip tube and shit. You try and keep your voice quieter. "I needed to talk that shit out with him, Kanaya." you push. You  _ hate _ when she's pissed off at you, it's so fucking rare, and  _ usually _ you deserve it. "It was freaking him the fuck out, and we needed to set it all straight."

He mumbles grumpily under his breath when Kanaya touches his arm, but doesn't wake up, even when she removes the old needle from his elbow and deftly replaces it with a fresh one at his wrist. "You should have brought him straight back to the block," she hisses at you, "Your foul little gremlin and I  _ both _ told you he's not nearly strong enough yet to be out and about." She tapes the needle down and straps his wrist back up out of the sopor, "He needs  _ rest, _ not further stress and confrontation."

She hustles you out of the room once she's done fussing over Makara. You frown over your shoulder at his quietly snoring form and realize what's wrong with it as soon as he's out of sight. "Oh,  _ fuck. _ I forgot to cut the fucking collar off." You'll have to wait until the next time he's awake.

" _ Karkat. _ " Kanaya snaps. "Pay attention." She puts a hand on each shoulder and leans down so she can look you in the eye. You blink and direct your attention back at her for a minute. "That boy needs  _ rest _ and  _ medical attention,  _ not inappropriate pale advances from a well-meaning but awkward warlord."

"I'm not a warlord." you correct automatically. "And I'm not  _ flirting."  _ You yelp when the rest of her words register. "For the  _ love of fuck,  _ Kanaya." You flail your way free and she actually lets you go. "He's  _ like six. _ " You're pretty sure the initial medical report had an estimated age significantly higher than that, but your point is even with all his gangly height he's  _ tiny. _ And a whole fucking lot younger than you. And defensively vulnerable and terrified and  _ fuck.  _ "And he's been through some serious shit, I would be the worst kind of scum to take advantage of that." He's rail-thin, and he has sweeps of neglect showing in his claws and his horns, "And I'm like twice his age, that would be so fucked up," and the last update you got from Kanaya suggests someone's gonna have to carve the keratin away from the supressor rings before they'll come loose, you want to explain that to him so he doesn't freak out, it's probably going to be  _ so fucking painful _ for him... "I'm just trying to-"

"Take care of him?" she cuts in, voice dry as fuck. Your voice dies in your throat. You're screwed, aren't you?

You close your mouth and swallow hard. "I  _ always _ take care of my people." you protest weakly. You're so fucked up. "I can't just-" You can't just leave him to deal with things on his own, he's  _ your responsibility. _

Her expression softens a little. "I know you can't." she offers quietly, and puts a gentle hand on your shoulder. "But this is entirely different from your time at war, and you know it. You can't behave as though he's just another one of your soldiers. It's cruel. To him most of all, but also to you."

"I'm just trying to make the best out of a bad situation." that sounded less sleazy in your head. What the fuck is wrong with you? He has  _ zero _ interest in any kind of relationship with anyone here, he's made that abundantly clear, and even if you thought he  _ was _ interested, you still  _ technically own him. _  It doesn't matter if it's just a formality, or if that little hard knot of possessive protectiveness in your chest is entirely platonic, it's still fucked up and wrong while you have this power over him. And if you're being entirely honest with yourself, which you never are, it’s not entirely platonic.

It's  _ never _ entirely platonic, because you're a freak of nature that can't stop coming over pale for every single troll you've ever met, and just because you've been relentlessly lucky and most of the trolls that have to deal with you understand, doesn't mean this poor kid needs to have to deal with your fucked up impulses. Kanaya is watching, so you try to pull yourself together. "I'll back off." you promise. "I need to get back to my office anyway." You can't take care of  _ everything _ from the comfort of your tablet. And you need to stop fucking bothering patients.

Kanaya frowns at you, "Once he's had time to recover, perhaps you can speak with him again. When he has the confidence to assert himself." She's right, she's always right, you need to back off and give him time. And you really shouldn't be pursuing any kind of relationship with him at all. "This is only temporary, Karkat, I'm sure." She's just trying to reassure you now so you wave her off.

"It's fine. You're right, he needs space. I don't need to hover over his shoulder all the fucking time while he's trying to recover." There's stuff to take care of, anyway. Supply issues. Discipline reports. It's been a while since you inspected the communal living areas, they're probably all living in squalor. "I'd better get back to work." Or sleep, maybe. Its past noon. "I'll see you later." you dodge her hand when she reaches out, obvious concern on her face. You're tired as fuck, and you want to go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> X3 so many wonderful comments, I love y'all.  
> I'm doing Hope of Morning for Camp Nano this month, so expect updates to pick up the pace a little maybe. With luck, clown snuggles are imminent.
> 
> As usual, thanks for reading, and if you see any glaring mistakes, horrific continuity errors, or have any questions, please [let me know](http://technicalchaotic.tumblr.com/ask)


	6. Despite everything, it's still you

The evening after the emperor talks at you, he slinks back into your block, looking like a kicked barkbeast. He's got a thing in his hand that makes you tense right the fuck up 'till you realize it's just metal snips like to be used on chain and shit and then you're just kinda motherfucking confused as to what he's about. He's looking all around like a wriggler expecting to get caught by their minder. You wait 'till he's almost at your coon before you shove yourself upright from where you were reclined and contemplating the plain drone-worked ceiling in utter boredom. "'Sup, motherfucker?" you ask in the closest you can manage to a cordial greeting at him.

He kinda startles and jumps real bad, like he don't expect that you'd notice a motherfucker coming into the block where you're all laid up and hurting. "God fucking shitdamn, you insufferable crotchstain,” he snaps, all bristle and snarl, “don't  _ do _ that. I thought you were _ asleep." _ You ain't sure if you're allowed to laugh at his panic or not, so you try and swallow your sniggers. It's hard as fuck though, 'specially when he looks abashed all of a sudden, color flooding his face as he mutters, "Uh. Sorry. You startled me." You can't help the twitch of your lips or the quiet huff that sneaks its sneaky motherfucking way out of you. He scowls at you. "Oh sure, laugh it up, let's all fucking laugh at Karkat, daring to try and do something  _ friendly. _ " he waves the snips around as he complains and you gotta flinch away when it comes too close to your face. He winces. "Fuck. Sorry. Again."

It's odd. You never really have seen him anything but calm and serious and working on shit. Something's got him all up outta his chill, and you don't much give a fuck what, but that he's maybe more likely to turn nasty, like this. Only, with his weird-ass swinging from bluster to chagrin and back, he don't seem like that serious no motherfucking nonsense emperor that's been chilling in your block the last little while and maybe he don't seem like to turn nasty, just now. You tip your head at him, eyes all narrow and laughing at him on the inside, and ask, voice all barbed and cautious. "The fuck kinda friendly you're all meaning?" You don't  _ really _ think he's here to do something you object at, not with metal snips, leastways, but you wanna see him squawk again.

" _ Oh my god not like that, _ I'm so fucking sorry, what kind of moron phrases it like that? I'm so fucking bad at this and-" he stops, eyes all narrow, and looks at you real motherfucking close. "You're laughing at me." The flat tone gives you pause, and you think maybe you misjudged and now you're gonna get shown better, but he just snorts through his nose and braces the snips against his shoulder. "You're kind of a fucking asshole, you know that?"

You shrug easily. You been told that, sure. Your brothers tell-  _ told _ \- you that  _ all _ the motherfucking time. You figure it ain't any less true coming out of a heretic mouth. "Ain't yet been told what all that motherfucking hatefriendly intent you got is aimed at." You prompt.

He lifts the snips a little, "I thought you might want that off." he waves at his throat a little.

Oh. You lose the little bit of mirth playing 'round your face and look at him real  _ real _ careful. What is this? Another test? What's he get from it? Pushing maybe? Wants to see how far he can test you before you snap and put your claws to use again? You ain't easy with things all sharp and metal right the fuck around your throat. Sure as fuck not held by someone as isn't even family. You don't want him so close as to be able to touch, neither. But in the end it don't matter much if it's all being 'cause he's testing at you or if you would've passed or failed that motherfucking test, 'cause the collar's been bothering at you as of late. Choking at you when you try and sleep, rubbing your hide raw. You'll do near about anything to get it off by now. "Sure, motherfucker." you say slowly, voice low and threat all woven through despite yourself. "If that ain't the most hatefriendliest thing I ever did get offered at."

He moves slow as he comes up to you, looks kinda motherfucking worried where you're watching out the corner of your eye. You tip your head a little, lifting your jaw and baring your throat so he can do as he will with the snips. The metal is cold against your throat, even cool-blooded as you are, and there's a scary motherfucking moment where the collar gets pulled on by the snips and you can't motherfucking breathe. But then the snips shear through the metal and the collar slips off your throat, catching itself over your shoulder. You take a breath and run the tips of your fingers over the rubbed-sore stripe of flesh where it used to sit. "Thanks." you say, surprised into sincerity. You didn't think he was really gonna do it. You pluck the collar off your shoulder and inspect it. It's gold-coated steel, all wrought in whimsical loops and whorls over the heavy band, with the symbol of the empress everymotherfuckingwhere. You make a sound of disgust and drop it over the edge of the coon so you don't gotta look at it.

"So, Uh. Yeah." he says. He's got a look about him like he's about to say something else, but after a minute he just captchalogues the snips and gives you a little wave, "Bye, I guess." And then he's gone and you're left staring at the door frowning all motherfucking confused. The fuck was all that?

***

Once you  _ finally _ get Makara's collar off, you make sure you're too busy to go bother him much. Kanaya's right, you need to back off. There's a million little things you've let slide since the peace talks really got started anyway. You start with a thorough review of the trainees. You don't find any more glaring discipline problems, but it still does morale good to put the fear of you into the newbies. With a few nights of air travel to get to all the nearby bases, plus staying overday at whatever base you're visiting, it takes up almost a week and a half before you're done. It's a nice distraction from things back home, since you can keep yourself busy enough that you don't have time to think about Makara who you're definitely not crushing on. You absolutely do  _ not _ spend a late morning in a guest coon agonizing over that defensive little chin-jerk that Makara gave to let you cut his collar off, almost angry enough to distract you from the way he went still and tense while you were working on him. You definitely don't spend more than one day like that. That would be creepy and stupid because he isn't even a little bit interested and you need to back the fuck off.

When you finally get home, there's no one waiting to give you bad news, so you let yourself assume either Makara's still behaving himself, or everyone has gotten really good at dodging. You gnaw on a protein bar as you trudge through your block, shedding your clothes so you can drop gratefully into the sopor.

Evening doesn't bring any impending explosions, and you're free to have your coffee and your shower in blissful peace. You even manage to get through the routine of paperwork and ditching the non-essentials before you have to deal with your headache of the night.

Tonight it's uniform shipments. The armband shipments came in on time, but the actual fucking uniforms, including the fucking infantry body armor, are delayed by some bullshit dark season storms, and you have to actually go bother Sollux to set you up for a three-way video call so you can explain in full fucking bellow why it is  _ completely _ unacceptable for your trolls to be left with inadequate protection for the perigee-and-a-bit it's going to take to reroute the shipment. It's an ascension season too, which means you have newly-pupated adults coming into their mandatory service with absolutely  _ no _ protection in the field, and frankly you don't think you're overreacting, maybe  _ they're  _ overreacting.

In the end you get a rush order put on the armor, and a guaranteed drone delivery within the week, which you're not satisfied with, but the factory representative is bawling at this point, and you might feel a little bad about that, so you relent and end the call before you can fuck up any worse than you already have.

It's shaping up to be one of  _ those  _ nights. You're already on the warpath about the fucking uniforms when the smug-ass old fart that runs requisitions comes into your office to inform you three separate bomb squads have overreached their munitions allowance for the entire fucking dark season and can't explain where they used  _ six hundred pounds _ of bio-explosives when you're not even technically at war. Three hours later you still don't have any answer but 'shenanigans', the Supplier is  _ trying _ to shout at you, which would be hilarious if you weren't so fucking pissed off, and Steker won't pick up her private line anymore, which means your bomb squads are probably going to collectively revolt some time in the next week. You catch sight of yourself in the ablutionsblock mirror and realize you're distinctly orange around your sclera. Maybe you should take a minute to grab some food in the mess and calm the fuck down before you break something important.

And then you get to the mess and find out the  _ food _ shipments got delayed too, and everyone's on field rations until those come in. You're about to breathe fucking  _ fire. _ You have to leave without anything because if you stay in the block another minute you're going to make the poor cashier cry, and he  _ probably _ doesn't deserve that.

You don't know what to do with yourself after that. You're too riled up to work, you're  _ definitely _ too fucking pissed off to stand theoretically sentient company, so finding someone to strife off the worst of your mood is right out. You scrub your hands over your face and take a breath before captchalouging your tablet.  Maybe a few rounds with the strifebots in the gym will make you feel better.

By the time you drop your third disembodied strifebot head to the floor, you're bleeding from your nose, your fists, at least one of your fingers is probably broken, and you're down a sickle. You also don't feel any fucking better. You stagger your way into the ablutions block to wipe the blood off your stupid face, ignoring the twinge of revulsion that shudders through you. Yeah you're a fucking mutant. You're also not a wriggler anymore, and everyone already fucking knows about it. It's just. Unnaturally bright, is all.

By the time you clean yourself up and abandon your ruined uniform jacket for someone else to deal with, you really should get someone to look at your hand, but you don't want anything more than to pour your stupid sore self into the slime and let tonight end already, so that's where you head. You're not paying attention to where you're going, because of  _ course _ you're not, you're too fucking busy on your tablet, trying to patch up all your fucking stupid mistakes of the night to pay attention to things like other trolls in the fucking hallway.

***

'bout a week or so after the emperor cut your motherfucking collar off, the doctorturer as ain't being a rainbowdrinker comes and tells you you're cool to fuck off to your block, if you can manage not to be a stupid asshole who sleeps dry, and also remember to take some stupid-ass little pills he gives you. You get given a backpack syllabus with some uniforms in it, and also a little tablet like you keep seeing all these motherfuckers with, and ever-so-politely booted out the door to find your own way back to your block.

It takes most the night, but you get yourself  _ maybe _ back to someplace as kinda-sorta is being familiar, by virtue of you found yourself a little map on the tablet thing, but it's real hard to read, and you're frowning at it all fierce and grumpy when a shoulder all motherfucking solid slams itself into your chest.

You gotta fail and fumble to keep your tablet from smashing itself on the floor, but once you got it all firmly in your graspfronds, you round on the motherfucking asshole who's staring down at his own tablet where it's all broken on the floor, what's left of the biowires twitching weakly through the chitin.

The emperor, 'cause of course it's the motherfucking emperor, for all it takes you a minute to realize what with him wandering about in his undershirt and looking like the main event at a carnival of spades, makes a sound that's maybe a laugh and maybe a snarl as he rounds on you his own self. You got a snarl on your own lips and you're bristling as much as you motherfucking can when you can't feel more than half your broken thinkpan, and you got your hands up to give as good as you get, 'till he looks you full in the face and you realize he's halfway to rage most motherfucking holy, his sclera near to match his blasphemous eyes. You ain't seen a troll in the throes of deep rage for sweeps and motherfucking  _ sweeps. _ Not since before you got your schoolfeed on well enough Kurloz let you lead a team. She tore her way through kin and fish alike, left a bloody swath behind her littered with splintered bone too blue to be all enemy color spilled. This troll ain't so big as she was, but he's still twice again your weight and his claws are sharp and battle-ready as he flinches them up toward you.

You stumble back, mumbling apologies, expecting to feel claws on you as you back out of range and turn to flee, shoving your tablet into your sylladex for safekeeping and scrambling away. Three halls down you trip over the troll you kinda motherfucking recall poisoned you the first night you were here. He catches you when you make like to fall on your face, and when you realize which troll it is you bristle, expecting to get hit or some shit, but he just drops you on your feet, and don't even ask what you got your running on from. All he does is tell you you're a couple halls off from the block that's all meaning to be yours, face all squinty and suspicious, and you're so motherfucking grateful for the direction you don't even begrudge him shadowing you the whole way 'till you find the right door and duck in to hide in your little corner for a bit.

***

You're an asshole. You're  _ such _ a fucking asshole. When you tripped over Makara you'd been pissy and startled enough to snarl at him, and as soon as he was gone you realize who you'd snapped at and you’re reminded that no matter how old or experienced you get, at the core you're still just a dumbass wriggler who can't stop shitting his diaperstub over every little thing. You just screwed up really fucking bad, didn't you?

He'd looked so fucking  _ scared. _ After the initial spark of aggression, which you were retroactively happy to see, he'd been terrified, and he probably was even justified in it. You've never actually hurt someone without meaning to, but there's always the chance, and it's not like he has any blood to spare right now. Fuck.  _ Fuck. _ You're going to have to apologize. Make sure he knows you're not going to hurt him. Make sure you  _ didn't _ hurt him. Goddamnit. Should you do that now? Should you give him time? Should you continue standing in the hallway like an assblisteringly stupid shitwad?

You grumble curses as you pick up your ruined tablet. Yeah, that's totaled. Great. One more thing to add to the pile of lusus shit that is your night. You toss it into your sylladex to forget about for a while. Maybe you should just go check on him. That's not inappropriate, right? Kanaya wanted you to keep your distance, but if you accidentally hurt him you should take care of it.

***

You only just got your breath back under control when the door bangs open and the Emperor barges in. You flinch back into the corner when his eyes land on you. They're not red anymore, just touched with orange. His shoulders drop some when he sees you, though, something like relief crossing his face. He moves forward like he wants to come closer, but when you rattle a warning at him he stops himself a good couple steps and a lunge away from you, which you appreciate a whole motherfucking lot. With you all unarmed and shit you ain't down for a strife just now.

"Good, you're fine." he says, and you kinda motherfucking object to that 'cause you sure as fuck are not  _ fine.  _ Your breath did the stupid motherfucking thing where it comes too fast without your sayso and it was his own fucked up self that put the fear in you to cause it. "Sorry. For the stupid fucking snarling and tantrum-throwing and whatever." Now he's not all wild-eyed and like to cull a motherfucker, he's got his thumbs tucked in his belt like he'd rather have his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders all hunched like a wriggler that knows he done bad. You think about being pissed off at his shitty-ass apology, but he goes on before you can decide. "I'm not mad. At you anyway. It's just been that kind of day, you know? It wasn't  _ you, _ you're not in trouble or anything, I'm just kinda stressed out right now and you ran into me at the wrong time. It happens, you know?" He doesn't seem like to kill you anymore, but he's still got an edge to his words, a sorta panicky babbling and you dunno which way he's gonna fall, violence or panic. Your silence just seems to push him closer to whatever edge though, "Fuck, I didn't mean that the way it sounded, I swear I'm not making a pass at you, I'm just trying to explain what's going on- not that I'm trying to make excuses, this was totally on me, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, I've never hurt anyone like that but you never know, right? Uh, not that I have a problem controlling my temper or anything, it's fine, totally fine, no moirail needed here, definitely don't have time for one of those," His face is going more and more red the longer he talks. It's kinda mesmerising in a scary sorta motherfucking worrisome way. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, or you!" You blink. That was kinda a jump. You think his eyes are going a deeper orange, "You're really pitiful but I'm just not interested, I promise, I have zero interest in you or your quadrants, I was just worried you might be hurt again, but you're obviously not which is a completely-appropriately hatefriendly amount of relief"

Okay, you're not scared he's gonna come at you all claws and intent to hurt anymore, but he ain't sounding altogether sure enough on the whole not-being-interested for your comfort, "Sure about that, motherfucker?" you ask, 'cause you're still playing the part of guest and not slave, and he don't seem to mind a certain amount of questioning from you.

Also, you're a little shit, and if he ain't gonna go for you, it's pretty motherfucking funny to watch him squirm. You're gratified when his face goes even more scarlet.

"Yes! Very fucking sure!" Wow. You didn't figure a troll so gruff could get his voice all high like that. He shifts to back out the door. "Anyway you're obviously fine so I'm just gonna go, it's getting late, you should get some rest, too, it's been kinda a stressful perigee for you too, a little relaxation wouldn't hurt. Oh my god. I'm just going to leave. Right now. Before I say anything else. Good morning." And then he's gone so fast you almost think he's flash-stepped.

"What the motherfucking shit was that?" The empty room don't answer back at you.

You take a while longer before you get yourself up. Partly you wanna be sure he ain't gonna pop back in and find you with your back exposed, partly you're  _ so motherfucking confused. _ That was a whole motherfucking lot of words he said, and not all of'm made much motherfucking sense. You kinda got the thought that he wants you pale though? Only he don't? Only you're pretty motherfucking sure he does from his blushes and screeches and denials. You entertain for a moment the idea of humoring him. Letting him touch at you the way you've let your family at you. He called you pitiful, he's been making like to take care at you. Your pan recoils from the thought of tainting those memories of them you loved with you playing the weak and fragile palemate for some mutant warlord.

If he wants himself a docile pet for caring and coddling at, you decide, he'll find himself as surprised as if he tried making a pailslave of you. You haul yourself upright and head to the ablutionsblock to get a drink from the washbasin. You pause at the door. There's two disks stacked on the side of the washbasin, fat and round and familiar as fuck. Not a label you recognize, not like you would, but a big round jar of white and a littler one of black, like you asked, little bag of sponges and fine little brushes like you used to use for festival paints, just like you motherfucking asked. Jar of setting powder, which you didn't even think to motherfucking ask for but showed up anyhow like a motherfucking miracle.

Not even mentioned, not to brag or to even tell you so, just left here for you all like it ain't even a motherfucking thing. Like he don't know the importance of such things, nor don't care to even figure it out. You twist open the white and load up a sponge to test out a swatch on your arm. It goes on smooth, a little thicker than you'd like, but nice enough. You don't understand this motherfucker at  _ all. _

You take a long, long time just looking at your arm with its neat little square on your arm. When you finally think to test it, running water won't smudge it 'till you bother at it with your fingers. You gotta scrub to get it all off. You make a quiet sound of satisfaction. Okay then, motherfucker. Cooperative enough. Seems like as not to indulge you. You examine your face in the mirror, tilting one way and the other as you think on what you wanna do.

As you lay down the base layer, you think on the emperor's awkward confusion. Didn't seem a game to you, his babbling and panic. Didn't seem like an act to set you at ease. You leave space around the eyes, and your lips all bare. You give it a bit to dry before trying the black. It goes easy enough, it don't wanna blend without your sayso, leaves your lines crisp and clean. He says you're stuck here. You give thought to it maybe being a lie to keep you here, but it don't sound untrue, that the fish queen would take you back the minute she could, if you ain't fulfilling some intention of hers here.

You give your eyes a shade more point than you're used to, mark your cheek and jaw with curved slashes of black like claws, dot your nose, do a curling grin over your maw that makes your fangs stand out in stark contrast when you flash a grin at yourself in the mirror. It's good. It's  _ right. _ It's not a mourning, nor a mask for war. The time for that shit's gone and done. It's not your old face, friendly and wriggler-soft. It makes you look less a thing of pity and more a thing with fangs.

You tip your head at yourself in the mirror and give a guileless, pleased grin, all fangs hanging out and eyes droopy-pleased like you used to be. If you're stuck here, it's on his motherfucking whim and pity. But if it's pity he's all wanting, it's pity of your own motherfucking choosing he'll be getting, and your own terms he'll be motherfucking accepting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sight of your own face fills you with DETERMINATION. 
> 
> So I didn't _quite_ manage clown snuggles yet. Clown snuggles are imminent though, I promise. 
> 
> Expect the next chapter in a couple of days, I'm excited about what's coming up!   
> As always, please let me know about any glaring plotholes, continuity errors, missing tags, typos, or questions you may have, and thank you so much for reading!


	7. Emotions are Confusing

You don't do anything right off. For all the other bullshit he spouted, the emperor _was_ right about it being late as fuck, and for all you ain't done much but walk to your block and get shouted at, you're still tired enough the prospect of sopor ain't as scary as it should maybe be. You make sure your paint's good and sealed, strip down to skin, contemplate the 'coon for a moment, and go check to make sure your clothes didn't muss your paint taking them off.

When you're sure your face ain't been smudged none, and you've put on another layer of sealing powder, and washed the leftover off your hands, and poked at your healing scars, and riffled through your sylladex to find them little pills you got given to be sure you're not meant to be taking any yet, and poked around on your tablet to see if _that_ knows when you're all meant to be taking pills and shit, which it does and tells you it isn't now, you don't got any choice but to admit you're stalling.

It's not a big deal. It don't have to be. You've been sleeping in a med 'coon for the last weeks, and you didn't slip even a little bit. Even if medical sopor is different and you know it. Even if you haven't had proper motherfucking slime to sleep in for sweeps. It's easy. Just climb in. It'll knock you right out. Won't even dream. It'll be fine.

You're getting cold standing in the air, and if you wanna sleep in your corner you gotta get dressed again, and also that motherfucking brownblood'll shout at you for sleeping dry, he said he would. It'll be nice and warm in the slime. You ain't had a proper rest in so long. It'll be fine. It's raw anyhow. Not near so strong, nor so sweet to taste. You won't fuck up.

You set your shoulders, firm up your jaw, prowl toward the 'coon like you're going off to war. It'll be fine. You promised Kurloz. You don't aim to break that promise now. You don't mean to disgrace your family when there ain't a way for you to make amends.

The slime is warm as you slide into it. You gotta fight a yawn as you settle in, all them nerves that got up in you fading away to nothing as the sopor does its work on your body. You don't duck your head under, you don't dare tempt yourself that far, but even letting your head float on the surface, as the rest of your body is cradled weightless and comfy, you slip off to your sleep faster than you've had in a long _long_ time.

***

You wake slow, rising from the grasp of sleep like a bubble in sopor. Your sleep-fuzzy pan don't know where you are at first; You're warm and safe and comfortable, but the ceiling is plain and unfamiliar, the block empty and dim with early-evening lighting, without the sound of moving feet or distantly beeping machines. It takes you a minute to remember you're sleeping in a proper 'coon for the first time in two sweeps, and back in 'your' block. The sylladex you got given is beeping.

You could maybe ignore the chimes if you pulled your head under the slime, but you wanna do that less than you wanna ignore the insistent mechanical noises. You haul yourself out of the slime with a groan, the faint chemical-sweet smell of drying sopor getting up your nose. You pause when you're on your feet, contemplating the chiming that's probably the tablet wanting you to bother at it. Sopor drying on your hide makes you itch, and scratching at it reminds you dried tastes almost like baked. The urge to eat it ain't hard to squish right now, with you awake and not hurting so bad, but it's there all the same, and it makes your nerves prickle to feel it. You go take your first voluntary shower in you don't even motherfucking know how long.

The worst of your temptation washed off your skin and out your hair, you shake yourself dry and pull fresh clothes out of the sylladex. Backpack modus is easy enough to work with, but it's boring as _fuck_ and don't do shit but exist and hold your stuff. The tablet's got a little flashing icon when you grab it, and sit in the chair to scrub the last of your paint off with last night's shirt and fuss with the tablet until it tells you it what it wants is charging.

You don't do much that first night. Not regarding your new resolve, leastways. Your tablet nags you to take one of the little pills the doctorturers gave you, and then a little later it nags you to eat. You poke around to see if you can get it to stop nagging you to do shit. You don't make the nagging stop. You make the nagging _louder._ When it brings up a little map with a flashing you-colored dot you give up and go to do your paints.

No one stops you as you follow the little arrows on the map. You catch a couple wary looks at your paint, and you meet them with lazy-dangerous eyes and the hint of a grin. It feels good to be wearing your face again.

You end up in a wide-open room with tables scattered all around. There ain't a whole motherfucking lot of trolls about, but what ones there are are sitting in pairs and groups, talking and eating. A couple take notice at you, and some of that smug confidence you had before turns to uncertainty when a heads turn toward you. You fight back the urge to growl and show your teeth. You got your face on, all they can motherfucking see is what you deign to show at them. You move slow, like you're too motherfucking badass to give a shit how many trolls are in the room, and hold your head high as you get a tray.

There's a list on your tablet of the shit you're allowed, and you got it well beaten into your nugbone that eating shit off the list won't go well for you, so you grumble and growl, but you leave behind the grubloaf and the fried tubers and end up with beefgrub and a little bowl of leafy green shit with beetles mixed in. At least you manage to find one sad, lonely little bottle of something that smells kinda like weak-ass hot sauce when you sniff at it. It's not on your list of food you're allowed, but ain't no one motherfucking said you can't, so you set it on your tray and go find yourself a seat.

You sit with your back to a wall, and aside from a couple doubletakes and sidelong looks, no one bothers at you while you drown your beefgrub in hot sauce and pick the beetles out of your salad for munching on. You fiddle with your tablet a little, tell it you've eaten so it can stop motherfucking bothering at you, and accidentally invert all the colors, which looks kinda cool, but makes your eyes hurt. You still don't know how to change it back when you're done eating, and you shove it grumpily back into your sylladex as you clear your place and dump your tray in a bin with a bunch of other trays. You think you can manage to get yourself back to your block without the little motherfucking map.

While you wander the halls, you think some on what you've decided on. It sits easier on you than the idea of putting yourself at his mercy and indulgence, but it still galls some, treating a lowblood like family. Not like it's blasphemy, or any way properly motherfucking forbidden. You know Kalton made free with his affections at lowbloods all the time, he whined about the troubles they caused him often enough. But Kalton always was an odd brother, and for you to do a kindness at some motherfucker as ain't even yours by blood and oath strikes you odd. Maybe not so unwilling as the alternative, but _odd._

If he's got the _need_ of it ain't a thing you don't bother to wonder at. A troll like him, all wound up tight? So twisted up any little thing sends him to raging and no motherfucking control to hold him back, a lowblood besides, with no troll but one ever to gentle him out of it, and him not even having that if he's gone and set his eyes on your scrawny self? He's got the need of someone doing a blessed kindness at him, no doubt. Could almost be moved to pity despite yourself if you weren't already all bitter-salty over being all trapped here and shit.

You put the idea out of your head. You don't gotta have pity for a motherfucker to do a kindness at him and you both. Your tablet makes the noise you're starting to think of as the 'you motherfucking dumbass' noise, and you pause, blinking vacantly at your block. Huh. You knew you'd get back without that dumbass map.

***

He's avoiding you. You weren't sure at first. You spent a few long nights planning your attack, punctuated by irritating tablet nagging, and then another night psyching yourself up for it. For all you _have_ done, this is a role you never played for any motherfucking kin as you ever got pale with. Still, by the fourth night after you came to your decision, you go wandering the complex of drone-built blocks and corridors looking to catch a particular motherfucker on his own.

And what you find is nothing. You pour over the map in your tablet, even find where his workblock's all motherfucking being. He ain't there when you wander yourself by, even peering your head in through the open door. He ain't in there, just a whole motherfucking lot of important-looking papers.

By the seventh night you're pissed. You know he's about, 'cause you _do_ see him, but always in a group, with two or three other important-looking motherfuckers, and that ain't how you wanna start this shit. Now you got an idea the course of action you wanna take, the idea he's standing in the way of you irritates.

You're no laughsassin, but you've had a touch of the training for it, and you can move silently enough when the occasion calls. It ain't the motherfucking same without chucklevoodoos to turn faces away, but it's something of a challenge, not-quite flashstepping from corner to corner, struggling to keep your breathing even and deep and silent when your body complains of exertion it's long unused to. You trail him over the span of a couple long nights, watching him like you'd watch any target. You learn his schedule and patterns, his habits and moods, in less than a week you're sure you're ready to strike.

***

You weren't prepared for how he looks when he has face paint on. Something about it changes the way he moves, or maybe you just never really saw him moving before. He _prowls_ now. He slinks from block to block like a feral barkbeast, a wary eye on the trolls around him. He's put on weight since you first saw him, not a lot, but some, and combined with the newfound confidence he moves with, and what you thought was delicate managed to turn lean and dangerously hungry.

It doesn't change a single goddamned thing.

He sets off 'threat' signals in your pan, but all it does it make you want to sit him down and make sure he's alright, that he's doing okay. He still looks like a barkbeast that someone kicked too many times, and he's still tiny enough that you could probably fit your hands all the way around his waist and have your fingers meet. And while you're being completely and totally honest with yourself, you're still heels-over-horns with this stupid wriggler crush. And it's gross and inappropriate and you need to get over it because he's going to be around here for a while and he doesn't need you trailing after him like a lovestruck grub.

So you avoid him, while you're trying to figure that shit out, and make sure you keep trolls around as much as you can, so you don't have the opportunity to slip up when he might be around, and you're so distracted not approaching him, you don't fucking notice _him_ approaching _you._

You stop dead when you get to your office, and your first thought before you _really_ look at him is that you were wrong and he's here to try and assassinate you. You twitch for your strifedeck, but then you actually get a good look at him and go perfectly still. He's sitting crosslegged on your desk, barefoot and wearing one of the uniform shirts he got on that first night, before Kanaya was able to get his measurements. It hangs loose on him, gaping the slightest bit at the neck and making him look even smaller than he does when he wears the shit that actually fits him. Not that you've been looking. But you're not _blind._

He's looking at you with this weird, indecipherable look that softens the longer you stand in the doorway of your own fucking office. "Can I, uh. Help you?" fuck, you sound like Tavros. Gross. You try to pull yourself together. "I've got chairs, you know."

He twitches his mouth into a tiny frown, tipping his head to the side. "You got a lotta motherfucking nerve, y'know?"  He shifts to dangle his legs off the edge of the desk, leaning back on his hands. "All up and propositioning a brother, and then you go all hard as _shit_ to find." You splutter incoherently. You weren't _propositioning him!_ Fuck, is he _pouting?_ "Makes a brother feel all shades toyed with."

"I wasn't- fuck, I mean I _didn't!"_ He slides off the desk and steps toward you as his frown shifts from petulantly sad to mildly concerned. Fuck. Why is he so fucking pitiful? He's painted up like some psychotic clown, he should look threatening. Get ahold of yourself Karkat. You take a calming breath. "Look, I'm really sorry, if I made you uncomfortable that _really_ wasn't what I'm trying to do. I just want to make sure you're as comfortable as possible here. In the complex. You don't have to be comfortable here in my office that would be weird. Unless you want to be comfortable here, I'm not stopping you, be comfortable wherever you want. Holy shit I'm doing it again, I'm so fucking sorry, I'm absolute garbage, someone please make me stop fucking talking." He stops right in front of you, confused concern all over his face, and you stop fucking talking.

He's looking at you, and his face is so damn hard to read behind that stupid paint, it's probably just wishful thinking that he's looking down at you with some kind of soulful concern. You're not used to having to look _up_ at anyone anymore. not since you were a kid. "Easy, motherfucker." he says to you, and his voice is fucking low and soft and you have _no fucking idea_ what's going on. "Ain't no offense meant, nor taken." his eyes soften, half-lidded and lazy, and you're so busy freaking out, you don't notice he's moving until he's hovering his hand _just_ shy of touching you, the first hints of uncertainty you've seen in him since you came into your office showing on his face. This is obviously a dream. This can't actually be happening. Fuck it.

You close the distance so his hand is cupped delicately against your cheek. His hand is cool. Surprisingly rough with bands of callous. Gentle as he smooths his fingertips over your cheekbone. "Look at you," his voice is soft and gentle as his free hand wraps around your wrist and tugs you further into the block. "all motherfucking twisted up." He runs his hand down to press his fingertips against your jaw, his overgrown claws prickling ever-so-slightly against the fragile skin of your throat and startling a chirrup out of you. You go scarlet as his face twists in surprise. Fucking fucked up Karkat with his fucked up misfiring brain. Claws at your throat should _not_ make you melt into a puddle of pale goo. If anything it should trigger some kind of pitch flip. You _hardly know this troll,_ you shouldn't feel so safe with his claws at your fucking jugular _._

He brings his other hand up to cradle your face between them. "Easy now." he runs his thumbs over your cheekbones and you're so fucking easy, you should be protesting more, but you want this to be happening so fucking much. "Settle down, shhh." Fuck, you're a moron, but you're too terrible a person to stop this. You let him draw you through your office, into your personal blocks. Fuck, how long as he been in here? He knows exactly where to go to find your pile of novels and pillows. You think about stopping this, trying to figure out _why_ he's suddenly throwing himself at you, because you could've sworn he had zero interest in this, but he very deliberately scrapes the barest tips of his claws against the hollow of your throat and you shiver and let him settle you into the pile.

***

Well. Fuck.

You'd expected eagerness maybe. Unashamed enthusiasm meant to take control of what you started. So you'd played the part you'd seen your brothers play when they mean to get their pale on with someone, unused to the role as you are, you thought you'd done okay. When he'd hesitated, you expected yelling and tensed for a strife. What you hadn't expected was. _This._

It's so motherfucking easy to read a face not in the paint. Even more to read his, when every thought that crosses his pan shouts its way out in the twist of brows and curl of facegash. And the wrigglerish fear in him when he leaned into your touch, met that challenge you were setting at him and allowed what you were making an offer at, that uncertainty hit you right in the motherfucking chest. You ain't never had a brother go gentle and quiet for you so fast either, not even close. "ain't you ever had a motherfucker to do this at you?" you ask, voice gone soft all of its own accord. "You ain't never had a pale brother to do a kindness on you?" You hadn't expected him to like your claws. That'd been an accident. You always forget they're too long. You were gonna watch at them more closely but for the sound he'd made when you'd scratched him a little. You'll have to remember that. You wanna make it so he never wears that startled-shamed look ever again, only makes confused little happy noises forever and ever. The strength of the thought startles you, but you're already all taken up in the fierce-protectiveness of putting another troll all gentled and helpless and at your pity. Might as well roll with it. "Poor little motherfucker." you murmur, and thread your claws through his tangly hair, ever-so-carefully scritching  your claws against his scalp, skirting around his horns. "Shooosh, now."

He tries to talk, and it comes out a distorted purring chirp, which is about the cutest motherfucking thing you've seen in a long time. You hum encouragement at him and leave off your scritches, curious what he wants to say. It takes him a minute, his face gone all embarrassed-scarlet again. "...been a while." He mumbles after a minute, going even redder than he was when you look at him all ‘no shit?’. "Fuck you, I've been busy." You snort and run the tip of a claw down the curve of a horn, gratified when he makes a strangled, choked noise and his eyes unfocus that least little bit. You give him a minute to come back from it. It's not  _ quite _ the same as how a hornrub puts you under, but it's the echoing, rattling sister of it, and if you ain't had it before, it can hit hard. You hold him steady with a hand curled 'round the back of his neck while he finds his bearings again.  There's still tension running all through him, enough you wonder if he _ ever _ all-the-way relaxes. 

  
You smooth your hands down his throat so you can get your hands around at all them twisted-up knots you can feel in his neck and down his spine. "Aw,  _ fuck _ , lookit you all twisted up, that shit's gotta be nasty painful." you keep your voice low and gentle and soothing as you rearrange him and you so he's curled in the fork of your legs where you can get at him, and where you can  _ just _ feel the uncertain, unsteady thrum of his purr as he leans back against your chest. You catch yourself wondering if he's really been alone so long. "Now shoosh and let a brother work."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. Just in case anyone missed that this is really obviously a porn storyline .-. ~~Pale Porn~~
> 
> but yes. squeaking in just under midnight, it's totally still 4/13 for another hour or so. 
> 
> As usual, thanks for reading and if you have questions, corrections etc, please [let me know](technicalchaotic.tumblr.com)


	8. In which Gamzee Makara gets to express Anger

It's a heady thing, to hold the life of another troll in your hands. An odd one, that this troll ain't yours just as much as you're his. And yet there is only the barest hint of tension in him as he lets you shift him around so you can work at his shoulders. Your claws are brittle and need sharpening, but there's no plating at hollows of his throat, nor much at the nape of his neck. You ghost your frondtips along the bare and vulnerable hide and he takes a breath, deep and shuddery, but not, you think, fear. You could end him, right the fuck now, and the only thing stopping you is that he trusts you to not. It's a thing drummed into you from wrigglerhood; you put him here. You started this when you made the offer of paleness at him, and you had it made clear and more than clear at you that this is a thing sacred, to put a troll where he can't fight, and a holy motherfucking duty to take care at a motherfucker 'till he's back to himself.

You procrastinate starting on his shoulders, distract yourself carefully picking tangles out of his hair 'till you can slide your claws through without catching on knots, and he sighs and slowly goes heavy and limp against you. You stay well clear of his horns after that first clattery tease. If this goes how you think it's gonna, there'll be time enough for that later on. You ease him over, with soft nothing-sounds and gentle hands, so you can get your hands up on his shoulders, dig your thumbs in against where he's twisted his poor self all up. There's scars just peeking out from the collar of his shirt, and you wonder what his strifekind is as you bring your slight weight to bear and wring a groan outta the emperor. You ain't good for much, and truth be told you never were much good for being sweet at a brother, but you give a _ bitchtits _ massage, and that ain't been a thing that's changed in all the shit been done to you.

 

***

 

You don't really know what's going on. You should probably stop this so you can figure out what exactly is going on. That's what you'd do if you were a good person. Just.  _ Wow _ . He's really fucking good at this. It's been forever since someone played with your hair, that's bad enough, but then he starts on your back. You've had massages before, it's not like you've never been in a pile before, but you weren't fucking lying when you said it's been a while, but you must have needed this more than you thought, because by the time he slides his hands back up to trace the line of your jaw you're that much closer to a complete fucking puddle and you can actually  _ hear _ your own purring. 

 

Which. Embarrassing. He's barely touched you and you're already half out of your head. You press shamelessly into his hands when he runs them over your face. There's a nagging thought in the back of your head that you shouldn't be doing this for some reason, but it's been so long, and you've been so stressed, and he came to  _ you. _ Why  _ shouldn't _ you be enjoying this? His hand pauses on your face and you click insistently and nudge more into his touch.

You feel his chest jump when he chuckles, trailing his fingers down your cheek, "Look at you." he whispers, almost to himself, "Who'd credit such a fighty little motherfucker would gentle with such ease."

Oh.

Oh _fuck_ . Something about the words strike right at your chest, but you're so far gone it takes you a minute to even parse what he'd _said,_ and then you just feel like shit _._ You're so fucked up. Pathetic Karkat Vantas, who'll go over pale for any troll who looks at him. You don't even know his first name. The realization brings you closer to the surface, where thinking isn't quite so much like swimming through sopor. You feel him hesitate when you stiffen, and he doesn't hold you back when you try to pull free, which you appreciate.

Because when you realized _why_ it's so fucked up you're letting him do this for you, you realized another really fucking important thing. _You_ might've been audibly purring up a storm, but there was only _one_ set of chittery rumbling happening in the room. He's not purring. Fuck.

You're such fucking garbage. You should never have let him start this. If he's not purring, he's not comfortable being here, and if he's not comfortable here, he's here because he thinks he _has_ to be _. And you just let him_ . Like this is something you fucking wanted — you ignore that it was — like you'd be even _remotely_ okay with this kind of mockery of moirallegiance, like you'd ever want _anyone_ like this.

***

You might've fucked up some. You let him go 'cause he's gone all tense all of a sudden, but he's got a look in him all of panic and distress, and you automatically reach out for him again, meaning to soothe and settle. He flinches away from your hands, and you settle back against the pile, frowning all confused at him. You dunno _what_ you did, but he's looking at you with dull horror in his eyes for all his purrbox is still going in fits and starts. Okay. He's still feeling good. Some other shit's got his back up, but you ain't fucked up so bad he's not down to keep going. Only he don't want you touching at him.

So that leaves talking. "You alright, uh." you pause, unsure what you're all meaning to be calling him. "Never did get our motherfucking introductions on, did we?"

That was the _wrong_ motherfucking thing to say. His purring stops dead and his face twists, in hurt or anger you're not real motherfucking sure. "Oh my god, I'm the worst fucking person. I'm an infected boil on the ass-cheek of the universe. The entire fucking universe is prevented from comfortably resting its ass on a chair because _Karkat fucking Vantas_ exists."

Uh. You ain't entirely sure what's going on except this motherfuckers gone all shades salty at his own self, and that bitter twist of his lips is one you maybe kinda motherfucking know for hatred all pointed inward. You guess you got his name now, though. "Hey now, uh, Karkat, right? Don't—" he's still going.

"After all what kind of self-flagellating masochist of a troll would ever _genuinely_ want to have anything to do with some disgusting freakblooded—" You kinda think maybe he ain't even really paying attention to you anymore.

"Aw, man don't be going at a motherfucker like—" He cuts you off again. This is starting to kinda motherfucking piss you off. The way he's going at himself like you ain't here of your own motherfucking free will. Like he ever had a chance of making you come here without your own motherfucking mind making the choice.

Your pan supplies how you were scared those first few days but that shit's different. It _is._ You chose this. This was your own motherfucking choice. Your own plan. Whatever unkind blasphemies he speaks on, you hold that thought to you, that this is a thing of your own making.

"I mean even the fucking condesce saw it, look at this disgusting excuse for a tro—" Okay. Enough is motherfucking enough.

" _Karkat motherfucking Vantas._ " you snarl, and pap him right across the sniffnub. He gets that poleaxed look like you just cracked him over the head with a club. You gentle your hand some, trace the tips of your fronds over the thin, fragile skin below his eye. "Shhh, sh-sh-shhh, be at peace." You speak softly as you slide your hand down so it cups the curve of his jaw, tap your fingertips against his cheekbone. "Breathe, come on now." He takes a breath, and then another, but he looks just as motherfucking miserable as he was a minute ago. You ease off him after a minute, 'cause he didn't want you touching at him earlier. "Now, uh." you ain't never done this part before. The whole motherfucking talking thing.  And you ain't terrible motherfucking sure you read the situation as right as you thought. "Kinda lost the thread, there." You start, unsure and cautious, and ease your hand away, hoping he won't start off on another tirade. "You wanna speak a shitbit slower and clearer? Lay on me what'd I do wrong?"

He takes a breath, deep and shaky. He's looking at you all hunted and miserable. "It wasn't you." he says, low and not looking at you, voice all dead and sullen. "I'm so fucking sorry, I don't want to take advantage of you like this, it's fucked up. I never should have let it get this far."

You just keep getting more confused. "The fuck you talking about, 'let it'?" Were you wrong? Did he not want this? How bad did you just fuck up here?

"I should have figured out what was going on before it got this far, I shouldn't have let you get the idea in your head that this was something you had to do." He's talking faster now, gesturing, "I should have guessed something like this would happen after my stupid fucking outburst last week."

"Okay, but, _I_ was all being the one coming to _you_ though." you protest, still confused and kinda irritated.

"That doesn't fucking _matter._ This situation is _so fucked up_ . I _swear_ I didn't mean to manipulate you into this, but I guess somehow I did, and that's why this can't fucking happen." You're gonna snarl a protest but he just pushes right on. "You're still hurt, and you've been through some fucked up stuff, and there's no way you're capable right now of making any kind of informed fucking decision about the state of your quadrants."

He stops there, looking at you like he's expecting you to just get up and leave at that, like he's _so motherfucking right._ Briefly, you consider hitting him. "If you don't want this." you say instead, and are startled to find real anger roiling in your chest, more than you even thought you had, "Then say so." 'Cause he hasn't said that yet. He just sits there and spews platitudes and motherfucking excuses, like you ain't a motherfucking subjugglator trained and grown and smart enough to make your own damned choices. "If this is a thing _un-motherfucking-wanted,"_ You say, your voice gone the way that would carry voodoos, if voodoos were still a thing you had, "speak those words clear and honest." He's staring at you wide-eyed and shocked. Like he dunno what to do with you now. Good. You let the snarl you feel show on your face. You spread your hands like to put yourself on display. "Speak truth unto me or shut the ever-pitying fuck up, my punchline-blooded motherfucker." With effort, you gentle your voice some, soften your face so your fangs aren't all on display. "One word. Easy as all fuck."

It takes him a minute to realize you're done talking. "But you—"

"Nope." You say, all smug. That ain't what you're looking for, just more motherfucking excuses.

He scowls at you, throwing his hands up in the air. "I'm just trying to—"

" _Wrong."_ You let your snarl twist into a smirk. You've not been so beaten and broken that you can't find the humor in a thing, and this is, gravity aside, _motherfucking funny._

He scowls at you, "This is so fucking—"

"Still not motherfucking it." you tell him in sing-song, grinning all tooth-bearing at him.

" _Would you fucking stop that?"_ He snarls, exasperated, hands all twisted like he'd like to take claws to you.

You don't think he'd actually. Not after all this fuss. Still, you drop the grin, jarringly abrupt, and you see surprise flicker through him just like you mean. "Do you want this?" you ask, voice serious as a club to the pan.

He stares at you a minute, shock on his face, before his eyes go all narrow and he snarls right back. "Do _you?"_

You flinch some, startled. "The fuck's that got to do with anything?" You got your horns canted forward, threatening and defensive, it takes more effort than you'd like to tip them back politely, even confused as you are. "I don't motherfucking mind it, else I wouldn't be here." You figured that was all being obvious as all shit.

"That's not what I asked, you gaping painted moron." he snarls, and you'd take umbrage at his insult, but you find you like him better snarling at you than his empty motherfucking platitudes. "Do. you. _want._ This?" he waves his hand around you, at the pile and you in it. "Do you genuinely fucking want to be in this pile with me, or is this some kind of bizarre fucking obligatory pity-party?"

Uh. You don't motherfucking like how he's turned this back around on you. You don't see what your _wanting_ has to do with shit. What you _want_ is your family back and the fishbitch dead and rotted, and all her line ended and slaughtered. But you can't have that, and him getting all up in your face is making you bristle. "This ain't a thing been forced on me." You say instead of answering him. "Not by manipulation nor force."

"Still not what I asked, shithead." he growls, shifting forward. "Do you want to be here?"

"I look like I got anywhere else to motherfucking go?" 'cause you don't. not really. Not if you wanna be safe. You thought about it. This was best.

" _Wrong,_ asshole. If you don't feel like you don't have any other choice, then you can't fucking consent to _anything._ "

You bark a laugh, short and mirthless. "No choice? If that's the motherfucking sand in your nook then calm your tiny heathen rumblespheres, _My Emperor._ " you take silent satisfaction in the way he flinches at how you snarl that. "I got _all_ kinds of motherfucking choices. Could run for the empress, die in glory avenging my brothers." You'd thought of it, those weeks in the medblock, figured Kurloz wouldn't want you ending your line in a suicide run. "Coulda got my culling on of you, run for the hills to deal with all this motherfucking shit on my lonesome." That one you'd dismissed right off for being stupid as fuck with you still all weak. "Figured making myself of use 'round here was the best motherfucking course." Easiest anyhow.

He makes a sound like a stepped-on grub and buries his face in his hands. "When I said we'd find something for you to do this _isn't_ what I meant!"

You tip your head to the side, mocking-confused. "You saying you _ain't_ got need for a kind hand and a gentle touch?"

He splutters at your smirk and flips you off. "That's not the fucking point!" You grin at him. He _so_ needs you. At least, he needs _someone._ You can't imagine you're the only one on offer, but seems you're the only motherfucker willing to be brazen about it. He huffs, but when he speaks again his voice is a kind of pitying gentle that sets your teeth on edge. "Look, ugh, I don't even know your first fucking name. Whatever. Look, Makara. You can't just _not mind,_ that's not how moirallegiance _works._ It's built on a foundation of emotional trust, and even if there wasn't some _seriously_ sketchy legal shit happening around us, you're still too traumatized and too fucking young, you're basically fucking _helpless_ right now. What kind of person would I have to be to take advantage of that?"

Are you traumatized? You don't much feel like it. Mostly you feel angry. And you ain't so motherfucking young as all that like he's saying. Motherfucker don't even know your age for proper and he goes and talks like he knows you? Fuck him.

"Helpless?" You repeat, voice gone dangerous-quiet, "like some squirming little grub, squalling for its dead lusus?" You shift in the pile and rise up on your knees to tower over him, snarl gracing your maw. "Motherfucker, give me a club, I'll show you _helpless."_ You bare every inch of your long fangs at him and jerk your hand in a harsh, violent gesture when he goes to speak. "Cut this motherfucking _shit_ off me," you reach up and tug a horn, making your hair shift so the suppressors can glint through, "and I'll _show_ you traumatized." You swing your head down, and he instinctively tips his horns to meet you, for all they'd be worse than useless in a fight, and you pause just short of cracking your skulls together. You look him dead in the eye, breathing hard from offense and maybe from the yelling. "I'm trained of the high motherfucking Subjugglators. Descended of the gods' own chosen line. I have culled more trolls than _you,_ little lowblooded heathen, will see sweeps. You wanna say I'm _helpless?"_ You're _not._ You're a warrior trained and tested, you've fought near half your motherfucking life. You ain't been a wriggler in four motherfucking sweeps and you will _not be treated as such._ You've leaned in close to make your point, words gone from deadly hiss to enraged bellow, claws all fisted in the heavy cloth of his uniform.

You stop when you realize what you're doing. The emperor is staring at you wide-eyed and shocked. The _emperor._ Who holds your motherfucking life in his freakblooded fist. Who decides if you live or die or die _slow._ Whose shirt you got all clutched in your fist. Who you just motherfucking got done yelling at. Like that, the balloon of rage that had sustained you bursts and drains away.

You're left shaking. Your breath is coming shuddery and uneven and you can't tell if it's from rage or upset that it's happening. He's looking at you with this confused shock all over his face. Fuck.

***

Shit. Okay. That just happened. He'd been terrifying up until a second ago. You have no idea what most of what he just said actually means, except that he's some kind of a big fucking deal, or he used to be. You hadn't really registered the holes in your fucking shirt until  he lets go and jerks away. He's looking at you the same way he had that very first night, and you move to—you don't even know what. Something you _just_ got done saying you _wouldn't_ do, probably. It's just. He looks so fucking scared.

"You— I— didn't motherfucking mean—" he swallows and moves away, eyes wide and startlingly purple against his paint. "I should. Uh. fuck. Can— Should I go?"

You don't want him to go. You want to ask him if he's okay. You want to wrap your arms around him and make sure he never fucking gets that look on his face again, especially not pointed at you. You want to do a whole fucking lot of things that would be a really bad idea. "Yeah." you make yourself say, more gently than you mean to. "Yeah, I think that's probably best."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, questions, concerns are best directed [here.](http://technicalchaotic.tumblr.com/ask) Any kind of feedback, positive or negative, my ask is always open, and anon is on. 
> 
> that said, this was a really tricky chapter to write, but I think it came out okay in the end.  
> Thanks so much for reading this far!


	9. The one where Gamzee makes a friend.

You go back to your block. You don't know when you started thinking on it as _yours_ , but yours it is, and when you get back to the sparse undecorated place, you don't motherfucking know what to do with yourself. There's shit happening in your pan you don't wanna deal with. You got fear all in your limbs, making your chest rattle and your hands shudder when you close the door firm behind you, and fuss with the keypad 'till you figure out how it's all meant to be locking. It won't stop them, but it'll buy you the time to get into the vents.

You're scared for how you fucked up, but more than that is the shame all curling up through your thorax like some smug motherfucking purrbeast setting claws all in your soul. You couldn't have read that any more motherfucking wrong than you did. Just. Throwing yourself at the first powerful motherfucker as looks gentle at you. The fuck's wrong with you?

Your corner seems harsh and unfriendly, not a thing as all being fit for inhabiting when you're trembling and frightened and wanting comfort. You got no family to go to, now. No kind brothers with arms for burrowing into, no sisters, protective and growling, to curl 'round you and pet your hair. No siblings at motherfucking all and you been alone all this time, mourning and raging about it, but it's now, after this stupid, _stupid_ stunt you just tried, that you just fucking _miss_ them. Not mourning nor swearing revenge. Just, you're _alone._ You really want a hug, is all.

You decaptchalogue all the clothes you been given since you got here, kick them all into the corner into the saddest, smallest pile you ever saw, and burrow under them, so the slight weight of the fabric is pressing on you and you can't much be seen from outside it, but for your horns and your face. It's not much, but it's better than nothing, and better by far than sliding into your coon and facing a temptation you feel unequal to just now.

No one comes busting down the door to drag you into a cell. No one comes at all. After a while of waiting fearfully, you doze off, startling awake at every sound, dreamed or real. Evening comes with the chime of your tablet nagging you to eat. You discover if you shove the tablet under your belly and close your eyes, you can _just_ about doze off to the rhythmic sound of muffled beeping. You fade back into sleep.

***

You spend the half the day freaking the fuck out. You pace the length of your block muttering to yourself about misguided, confused, impressionable highbloods, and how you shouldn't under any circumstances be allowed near them.

Around three in the afternoon, your palmhusk crackles to life and starts lisping at you. "KK, I appreciate you just struck out in the _worst_ way, but do us all a favor and _go the fuck to sleep._ You're scaring the bees, _fuck."_

You flip your palmhusk off before you realize how stupid that looks. "Fuck off _Thollux._ " You start stripping down for coon. Because you're tired, not because that asshole reminded you you're tired as fuck. "I'll go to sleep when I'm good and fucking ready." You pointedly ignore his stupid 'ehehe' sniggering through the speaker. You snark and snarl back and forth while you toss your boots vaguely in the direction of your pile and peel off your body armor, and you've almost managed to stop freaking the fuck out by the time you're slipping into the sopor. "Don't think I didn't catch that, douchelord." you grumble as the slime does its work. "I fucking let you win."

His stupid 'ehehe' filters through the speaker again. "Sure, KK. No pile, bro. Go the fuck to sleep already." You don't deserve to have the friends you have, your sopor-stupid brain informs you, and you're just awake enough to know better than to say as much to Sollux.

***

In the evening you call Vince, 'cause if you call Kanaya she'll bury you under her favorite fruit tree, and if you call Terezi she'll laugh at you, and everyone else is too busy doing their actual jobs to listen to your bullshit whining. Vince's job is whatever the hell you say it is, so at least you know you're not distracting him from anything.

He slouches in looking kind of pissed off. Fuck. You forgot about Stecker. "'Sup, boss?"

"I need your help. With the, uh—" you move your hands kinda helplessly.

He gives you a look. "Man, I ain't helping you with _any_ kind of thing to do with pailslaves."

You might screech, just a little, " _He's not a fucking pailslave._ " He _knows_ that, the fucker. "You know me better than that, Vince, holy shit."

He unbends a little at that, "Okay so what'd'ya want? Show'm around? Keep him busy? What?"

See, this is why you like Vince. He's an asshole. But he's a _useful_ asshole, "I just want you to keep him out of trouble, whatever needs to happen for that. Get him a job, set him up so he knows where everything is."  Vince leans against your desk while you talk, and you settle back into your chair. He's frowning a little bit, and you get the feeling he doesn't really approve, which is fine, you're getting used to people not fucking approving where Gam— _Makara_ is concerned.

***

You don't leave your sad excuse for a pile. The tablet's chiming is so constant as to fade into nonexistence, your belly troubles you no more than it always motherfucking does. There's no reason for you to leave the safety of your shameful little nest. Then, after a long time of fitful dozing, there's a knock at the door. An offended, murderous emperor doesn't knock, so you ignore it.

A few minutes later it comes again. You give the door a contemptuous look, squirm a little more securely into your clothes pile and stay silent.

There's the pause of a breath, and then it starts up again and _doesn't motherfucking stop._ A tireless rhythmic knocking, no urgency nor threat, just a constant _knockknockknockknockknock_ that makes you grit your teeth and muffle an irritated growl in a clean black shirt. It stops after more than a few long, unbearable minutes. You breathe a sigh of relief.

"Come on man, I know you're in there." You go dangerously still, "The tablet doesn't lie, dude, just open the doooor." Maybe if you're very still and quiet, the whining voice and its owner will go away and leave you in peace. "Seriously my guy, I got _orders,_ y'know? I can't fucking leave or Karkat'll yell at me. You ever have him yell at you? it's _horrible._ Sometimes he even tears up a little, it's really sad, and then you just wanna hug the little asshole. And then he doesn't _want_ a hug and you have to like chase him all over the complex and it's a whole _thing,_ you know? Uh. Lost my point. Fuck." You snort despite yourself. What's this spacy motherfucker even want with you? Seems too pancracked for a cullsquad. "Right, yelling. Look man, I just gotta like, show you the ropes and shit. No creepy intentions here, I'm all diamonded up already." You don't move. Funny and dumb as fuck he might all be, but you ain't letting him in if he can't undo the keypad all on his lonesome. There's a long pause as he waits for response as ain't coming, and then he _whines_. Like some whiny-ass barkbeast, and scratches at the door. "Let me iiiiiin. Bro come the fuck on." Movement catches your eye. You crane your neck to see the door, and there's the orange tips of claws wiggling around in the gap between floor and door.

"Fuck off, motherfucker." you rasp at him, your throat all rough from not speaking.

There's a long silence, and then, "Good, you're alive, you can let me in." you make a sound you hope conveys exactly how you feel about that noise. "Aw don't be like that." You hiss at the door and squirm further under the pile. You hear him sigh. "Look man, I didn't wanna go there, but I know for a fact you ain't been to the mess since you and Karkat had your little disagreement or whatever happened there. You gotta let me in or I'm gonna need to tell Doc Maryam on you, and then we'll _both_ get yelled at." There's a pause while he waits for a response as ain't coming, and then, "You remember Head Doctorturer Maryam, right? Tall, pretty as hell? Vants to suck your _blahd._ " another pause, "Don't tell her I did that. Ugh, come on. Makara, Makaaaaara."

You consider calling his bluff, only you don't wanna piss off the rainbowdrinker, and you kinda get the feeling opening the door to a cullsquad is better than listening to this motherfucker whine much longer.

 

You expected some little mouthy blueblood or some shit, with a cullsquad at his back, but the troll at your door is alone, teal, and taller than you. He beams down at you broad and polite, no fangs, and happier than any lowblood ever should be to see a pissed-off clown. "paint's smudged." he informs you, gesturing at your sniffnub. You slam the door in his face and stalk into the ablutionsblock.

When you have done your paint up properly, and had a drink out of the faucet, you're not at all surprised to see the lowblood soldier sprawled out on your chair with his feet up on your table. You slap them off grumpily and he bounds to his feet, gleeful as a barkbeast. "Okay! First stop, mess hall!"

 

You give him a baleful look. "Ain't being hungry." you say without much hope.

"Sucks." he retorts, merciless as a legislacerator, and puts a hand on your shoulder to propel you out of the block.

***

Once you've shaken his hand off and sullenly let yourself get herded toward the mess, the tealblood introduces himself as Vincnt-call-me-Vince, and then looks at you bright-eyed and expectant 'till you remember yourself and offer grumpily, "Gamzee."

He don't chatter at you much, which you appreciate, just strolls on next to you like he thinks you're hatefriends or some shit. Your tablet finally shuts the fuck up when you walk through the doors of the mess and get yourself a plate of something you probably ain't allowed to have. He grabs himself a grubburger and fries and slings himself down at the table across from you, still looking more pleased than you think he's got any right to be. You glower at him and stab your grubloaf.

You're partway done with what's on your plate and all the way done with trying to put it in your face, and picking at what's left when he goes "So!" all chipper and sets his tablet out on the table. You tense, eyes all narrow at him when he takes a bite of his burger and starts jabbering at you. "We've got a couple of openings around the base, all scutwork obviously, sanitermenation mostly, administraitorism stuff, that's all base-level secreterrorism though, you don't want that. We _always_ have room in the ranks, but Karkat wants you non-com. If that's like, your deepest burning desire though, I can tell him to go fuck himself." He pauses, looking kinda concerned on you. "You getting all this?"

"The _fuck_ you talking on?" Your voice comes out harsher than you mean. You don't apologise. All his rapid-fire talking's got your back put _right_ up, and you don't like it at all.

His face clears up and he kinda waves his hands like 'don't even worry bro', " _Jobs,_ man," he sticks a fry in his mouth and uses another one to point at his tablet. "Just 'cause you're all pretty'n purple 'n shit doesn't mean you don't gotta pull your weight." He shoves the other fry in his face and taps the screen while he chews, "and we don't have upper-level openings. So scutwork. What's your poison, dude?" He flips the tablet 'round and shoves it at you. You consider telling him to go fuck himself, but he's looking at you out the corner of his eye like a challenge, and you think of Karkat—the _Emperor_ —saying 'no one gets a free ride.' Like you never did hard work back home. You glare and pick it up to flick through the screens while he applies himself to his burger.

Sanitermination's got a little white-flashing icon on it and a long, long list of shit saniterminators are meant to be dealing with. Daywalkers, the occasional shadowdropper, you figure that shit's standard. Rogue insectoid lusii, them fuckers get in everywhere, messiahs bless. Run off the occasional cholerbear coming outta the brush, sounds fun, if you wanted to go putting forth effort over this shit, the end of the list, though. You go a little faint. "Y'all motherfuckers get flitter-weavers down here?" Vince grins at you around his food and holds his hands apart, about the size of a purrbeast. Nope. You flick to the next one.

You're not much one for secreterrorism though. You make a face. Too much book shit, too much sitting in one place. There's more entries after that, none of it shit you wanna do. Janitorment, server maintenance, rehabilitative helmstech, whatever the fuck that's all being. You keep flipping through the list, feeling a little more lost with every repetition. You think on a future culling bug lusii or scrubbing loadgapers or doing whatever the fuck secreterrorists do, and you set down the tablet, glaring fiercely at your grubloaf, trying to hold yourself up out of that yawning hole that just opened under you. You're stuck here. You're alone. You ain't even a warrior anymore, you may as well be any other useless faithless motherfucking blueblood. You swallow hard and pick at your meal some more.

"You don't hafta pick just now." Vince says, and you bristle at the gentle voice he uses, and the look in his eyes too close to pity for your comfort.

You hunch your shoulders, "Thought you was all motherfucking 'diamonded up.'" you growl at him, and he doesn't get pissed at you like you kinda hoped he might, but at least he kinda looks at you all crooked and grumpy instead of looking at you like you're some broke-horned wriggler.

"Don't flatter yourself," he says, voice all light with teeth hidden under, "You're cute but 'broomsticks and spite' ain't really my type, bro." You toss your horns, a little offended, and he snorts a laugh before he sobers some, "But for real, you don't gotta choose just now. You can stay on leave a little longer. Not a _lot_ , mind, but a little bit."

"The fuck's gonna change 'tween now and 'a little longer'?" you grumble, not expecting an answer. You ain't jumping at the chance to scrub some other motherfucker's loadgaper, but you ain't hurting no more, nor're you tiring so fast. If Sister Restri caught you lingering 'round the infirmary in such a state she'd have your ass. Seyova woulda tossed you headfirst into the sparring ring a week ago. Now the challenge's been put down, on if you're gonna keep on being a lazyass, it prickles at your pride that he offers.

Still. Loadgapers and flitterweavers. Ugh. "This all there is?" you ask. He looks at you kinda pleased and considering and goes 'hmm' all thoughtful, and you snap to attention at that. "Motherfucker, don't hold out on me." You _don't_ wanna spend the next sweep with loadgapers and flying eight-legged venom-factories the size of motherfucking _purrbeasts._

"We-eeell." he stretches his arms over his head and yawns. "I mean I could always use another set of hands around." he says, all super-casual in the way your brothers used to do when they were gonna get you into shit.

You don't trust this motherfucker half so far as you trusted them, so you don't keep the suspicion out of your voice when you ask, "Doing what?"

He shrugs, "this and that. Whatever needs doing, you know how it gets." like you _should_ know how it gets when you ain't never spent more than a half-perigee in the company of lowbloods. "I lend a hand wherever we have a job that doesn't have a specific person. Like this." he kinda waves at you and the table and the tablet. "Tonight, _you're_ my job. Get you settled properly, make sure you know what's up and where shit is, and all that. It's a lot of work for one troll. I wouldn't mind taking on an assistant, if you wanna."

"Why ain't it in the list, and you needing help so motherfucking bad?" you drawl, still all tensed-up bristling at this troll who's trying to play you some way you ain't quite sure of yet.

He leans forward, grin turning all conspiratorial, "'cause Karkat would lose his fucking _shit."_ You prick up a little at that, curious despite yourself, and he goes on. "Look, he wants me to talk you into a secreterrorist gig or some shit. Quiet. Out of the way." he waggles his eyebrows at you. " _Safe._ " You must be showing your feelings more than you meant 'cause his grin gets wider and shows teeth at you all in-cahoots and promise. "Only, that's kinda fucked up, you know? And I really _could_ use an assistant to help out with stuff."

Yeah, that's _kinda_ fucked up, motherfucker still trying to coddle you after all this. After the shit you said at him _specifically_ about not treating you like a motherfucking wriggler. After you spent a night and a day waiting to get culled for your outburst. You offer your hand for shaking. "Vince, it would be my honest motherfucking _pleasure."_

***

Vince keeps you arguing back and forth on what you should do with Makara for _hours_ . By the time he leaves your block, you need a drink. Or at least some _strong_ coffee.

You dial Stecker instead. It's not just that Vince is pissed off enough to argue with you, your bomb squads are an integral part of your army, and you really can't afford to lose them just because you're too proud to apologize to your head demolitionist.

"You've reached Stecker Cistre, mad bomber extraordinaire. I can't answer the phone right now, I'm busy avoiding my asshole boss. Leave your message, this communications device will explode in ten seconds."

You can hear breathing at the other end of the line. "Stecker," you scrub your hand over your face, "Can you be serious for one fucking minute?"

"Nine...Eight...Seven..."

You sigh, "Look, I know I'm the dribbly leavings in the diaperstub of the universe, but that's really no reason to—"

"...Five...Four...Three..."

Ugh, fuck it. "Fine. I'm sorry. I was an asshole."

There's an ominous pause. "And?" She's dropped the polite answering-message voice at least.

"I was being completely unreasonable." you were. You're grown up enough to admit you were having a little bit of a tantrum by the time you called her.

"And?"

"I shouldn't have said that about your lusus. It was rude and uncalled for."

"Uh huh. _And?"_ She's grinning on the other end of the line, you can fucking tell. Why does she have to be such a _brat_?

"Ugh." this is why you didn't want to apologize. "And Stecker Cistre is the most brilliant blah blah blah and I don't appreciate her enough." this is so fucking juvenile.

There's a long, considering pause. "That was the saddest, shittiest apology I ever heard, Sarge. You know Serket's offered me a spot? I could do with a vacation. _You_ could stand to grovel."

You growl under your breath. "Pushing your fucking luck, Cistre. Watch it."

She laughs. Of course she does. "Fine. Only 'cause Vince asked nice, though. Done my part here anyway." Oh god. You _really_ don't want to know. The less you know about Vriska's activities, the more plausible deniability you have, and you fucking like it that way.

***

That first night Vince runs you ragged 'round the complex, showing you all them as you gotta make your introductions at, The Supplier and all his minions, mostly, this and that troll that can get shit done at speed, you learn so many names your head's spinning by the time he herds you back into the mess to make your tablet shut up, and before you know it, you've been abandoned to your grubloaf with a hairscruffle you try to dodge, and an admonishment to not make him hunt you down at the evening.

The next evening he don't barge into your block, for all you're half-expecting it as you heave your aching, tired self out of the slime with a piteous whine. You slap haphazardly at your tablet as you pass, grumbling, toward the ablutions stall.

He plops himself down across from you while you're picking unenthusiastically at grainslop with crushed beetles mixed in. He's got gruntbeast slivers and beefgrub all wrapped 'round with curdled dairy and dough and you try and not whine jealously. The trolls on nutrient-duty all been told to watch you don't take shit as the doctorturers say you oughtn't have yet. You get bland and gentle shit as won't set your belly to upset 'till it stops complaining when you eat a shade richer, or so the rainbowdrinker says. They even disappeared your chili sauce. Motherfuckers.

"Looks like cavern deliveries tonight." Vince says through a mouthful of meat. You pick some more beetles out of your grainslop and grunt questioningly at him as you chew them. He's not looking at you, just flicking shit around on his tablet, "We have teams down there already, but they can always use a couple spare fronds on delivery day." he flicks through a couple more screens, "'nless you wanna go cultivate biowires, but we'll deal with them enough I don't mind, y'know, _anything_ else." you make a face at him. You got no idea what you're gonna deliver, but you'd rather anything than the messy smelly yuck of fucking with biowires.

"Just as soon not fuck around with them horrorterror fronds." you mumble around a spoonful that's accidentally more slop than beetle, and he makes a grimacing face that you figure means he agrees.

"Cavern deliveries it is." he says airily, and licks his claws free of grease, "You done?" You consider your mostly-full bowl of grainslop and shrug as you climb to your feet.

***

You stay on cavern deliveries near a whole week. Ain't real interesting. Vince does all the talking, you just lift what you're told and set it where you're told, and ride the back of the little powered cart to keep all the crates and shit steady.

It's simple work, not so heavy you worry on the doctorturers getting salty with you, but by daybreak you're tired to the bone. You droop over your dinner, eating what you been given without picking out just the good bits, and you drop into your coon without hesitating, and sleep without dreaming.

***

"Last night of vacation," Vince tosses a crate at you and you catch it and swing it up on the stack. Smells like medical goop and grubsilk. Gross.

"The fuck you calling this shit vacation for?" you grumble and catch the next crate as he tosses it. It didn't take more than a day or two to get into the rhythm of catch-swing-release of loading up the cart. You and Vince aren't the _only_ team delivering supplies to the jades, the Supplier's minions are working right alongside you, but it's still a fuckton of shit to be delivered, and it's no motherfucking vacation to you.

He flashes you a twisty grin when he hands you the next box. More medical goop and—huh. You sniff again. Blood? You think of the rainbowdrinker doctorturer and suppress a shudder as you settle the crate in with the rest. You don't wanna know.

"Stop sniffing the crates, Makara." He says instead of answering, "Do you _really_ wanna know how many rainbowdrinkers're in the caverns?" He tosses you a tie to strap the crates in.

You shrug and hook the stretch-tie around the back, "More'n a dozen?"  He doesn't answer, just gives you a look and goes to haul himself into the driver's seat "You're fucking with me, man, ain't that many." He starts up the cart and you yelp, " _Vince!_ " His cackles filter back over the whirring of the engine and you catch yourself grinning as you scamper to swing yourself up on the back.

***

You can't deliver shit to the caverns forever, and the next evening you figure out what 'vacation's over' means when Vince plops down in front of you in the mess and says all false-cheerful, "So you want the good news or the bad news?"

This week of working with him put you off your guard, more or less. Least when it comes to Vince. He's an okay motherfucker. Real chill, kinda an asshole. His tone puts your back right the fuck up, though.

"Bad news." you say without considering. Bad news is always the important one.

"So the good news is," he starts, and flashes you a grin that don't reach his eyes when you groan and throw a dry grainslab at him, "We're done with deliveries! So until something momentous comes up, we're back on biowires, yaaaay." he waggles his fingers in a silly little display and sounds not at all enthusiastic about biowires.

"That the bad news?" You know it ain't, with the way he ain't looking at you. You nibble reluctantly on your boiled egg and grumble at it. You oughta poke at your tablet 'till it tells you when you gotta go see the rainbowdrinker again. Maybe she'll let you have nutrition with a shitbit more soul in it.

"The bad news is, uh." He shifts around in his chair, which looks stupid as fuck on a troll his size, "Look, don't get pissed at me, alright? This is coming down from Karkat, I'm just the fucking messenger. But." He fusses with his sandwich a minute, "You know how negotiations were paused for a while after you got here?" you hadn't, but now you guess you do. You shrug and he goes on, " _Her Imperial Condescension,"_ he sneers her title, "feels our little republic has fallen beneath her notice, and won't be returning to negotiate in person."

You dunno how that's all meant to be bad news to you. "Kay." You say, real cautious, "only why'm I all getting mad, though?"

"You're _not_ getting mad. You're staying not-mad, and calm, and out of trouble while her delegate is on-base."

Oh. _That's_ why you're getting mad. Karkat's _still_ motherfucking trying to coddle you, after all this bullshit. You take a breath. And another one. You could go cause trouble, if you really wanted. But you don't wanna. You wanna not be around fishtrolls is what you want, even if it smells of obedience and bothers at you. "Kay." you say, flat and short, and he's looking on you all concerned, but you shrug him off and stab your boiled egg with more force than strictly needed. "So. Biowires. Motherfuckin yaaaaay." you twiddle your fingers in a poor mockery of his gesture.

***

Vince is grumbling and explaining what size and how much you gotta harvest outta the biowire vats, and you're trailing along beside him, not-thinking about the fishtrolls that are gonna descend on the base soon, that you ain't allowed to strife at, and mostly-listening as he taps in a code to the helmsmen's quarters and shoulders the door open.

The stench hits you in a wave, hot-wet-alive, and you're moving before you think, away, _away_ , Vince is shouting behind you, confused and pissed, and it's not motherfucking _real_ —broken horns and bare face still all twisted in a snarl, glistening purple ropes below and the hot heavy meat-smell of rot—your gorge rises and you stumble, teeth grit to keep the acid down, horns knock against a wall as you stagger and catch yourself and just lean there, gasping breaths that want to be sobs—it's not _real_ but it _was,_ and your stupid cracked pan keeps shoving it to the front, the wounds and the horns and his poor motherfucking face, scrubbed bare and left untouched and out of reach of the dark carnival.

There are voices around you, '-kara!' and 'don't, remember la-' And your breath's coming too fast again, you can't catch it, and you can't push the images down and away, and the only thing keeping you from crying is the panicked, hysterical thought that Kurloz'd be pissed if you mussed your paint over him.

"Gamzee." You flinch at the voice. It cuts through the roaring in your pan, "Gamzee, come on, fuck, don't pass out on me." A hand wraps itself around your shoulder, searing-hot. Not clammy, damp-cold and scaly, clasped firm 'round the back of your neck. You don't attack it. "Seriously man, if I shoosh you and you kill me later I'm going to be _pissed."_ He shakes you, gently, just a little, and you give a sad little croak of a noise. "Fuck, come here, shh"

You let him tug you away from where you're clinging to the wall. He's solid. He doesn't budge as he pulls you in and lets you lean against the warm soft bulk of him. It's the motherfucking emperor, and you _know_ so, but you got the face of your dead family in your pan, and you need a hug so motherfucking bad. You're not gonna be choosy just now. You'll deal with the complicated shit later. "Ain't even a thing." you mumble against his shoulder. "'m fine."

"Like fuck you are." he replies without heat, "Shoosh already." So you lean up against him and motherfucking shoosh, and let him hold you, just for a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp.  
> It's only been like. what? A month? orz, sorry, this chapter was a fucking BEAR to get done. slightly longer to make up for it hopefully? The next one won't take nearly as long hopefully. 
> 
> This chapter you get to meet two of my many many many fantrolls. Vince(teal) and Steker(rust) are moirails, and absolutely ridiculous, and I hope y'all like'm because they'll be showing up every so often when poor Gamzee needs a break from The Plots. And also they're my (and weevilo's!) babies. my not-clown babies. I have clown babies too but they're not in this fic. :o(
> 
> There have been SO MANY fantastic, long, wonderful comments by super thoughtful people, and I'm so very fucking bad at replying to them, I'm so so sorry. I'm gonna try and get on individual replies at some point 'cause y'all are just too nice, it's ridiculous. I love you all. Yes including the ones that haven't commented. If you're reading this I love you. -dissolves into sap-
> 
> As usual, let me know if there's any glaring mistakes or missed tags. Thank you so much for reading and sticking around~
> 
> EDIT: oh my god I can't believe I forgot. If for some reason you have not read [Ain't There](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6899914) you should go do that IMMEDIATELY. Weevilo is a goddamned angel who wrote my fanclowns not communicating with each other, and it's official canon to the 'verse 'cause I said so. So if you're hurting for a lack of fanclowns. that's where you'll find them. seriously read it it's so good.


	10. The Calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes

  
  


He's not growling this time. He's shaking as he presses into you, and you wrap your arms around him automatically, and decide to freak out about this later.  _ Fuck,  _ he's so small and precious the way he tucks his face against your shoulder to muffle the hitching, whimpering sounds he's making, but this is  _ not the time _ . "Breathe, you idiot, come on." you run the heel of your hand down his spine. He's put on weight since the condesce left him here, but you can still count the knobs of his vertebrae under his shirt.

He takes a shuddering breath, "Shh, yeah, there you go, breathe." You have more experience than you'd like shooshing someone in front of an audience, so your voice doesn't waver when Vince clears his throat and starts herding legislacerators away. Your face might go a little dark. Terezi's blind, she can't prove anything. "You're okay, Shhhshsh."

It feels like an hour of holding him steady and mumbling stupid soothing nothing-words at him, and trying to keep yourself from swearing to tear the fucking horns off whatever troll did this to him, but there's no way it was longer than a few minutes before he shifts in your arms and you realize he's trying to pull away. 

 

*  *  *

 

When you shift to get up from where you're down on the floor with him all wrapped around you, he jumps like he's been burned and springs away from you, all fleetbeast-in-daylight startled. For a long, shameful moment, you miss the contact and the warmth. You shake yourself, take a long shaky breath, and blink away the tears that never  _ quite  _ managed to fall.

"I'm not going to ask, okay?" You flinch and whip your head up to look at him. He's chewing his lip like a wriggler and looking at the floor. "I'm trash, but I'm not absolute garbage. But if you want to. If  _ you  _ want to. Not out of some twisted self-imposed obligation. I---" he stutters, going abruptly red, "uh. You know where my door is." and then he spins on his heel, some pretty piece of parade shit lowbloods make their troops do, and is gone down the hall, pack of tealbloods scrambling to catch up.

Vince is standing off to the side, looking kinda confused and unsure. Your face goes hot under your paint, "Sorry." you mutter as you stalk past him, and back down the hall towards the helmsman quarters. It's unlocked, slides open as you approach. The smell is as bad the second time, but this time, you're expecting it, and it's no worse than a short pause for gagging as you square your shoulders, clench your fists to keep them from shaking, and march on through the door.

 

*  *  *

 

A perigee 'till the delegate's arrival. The date glows in your brain, as long again as you’ve been here, at once an eternity and not near long enough. Vince swears you won't have to even get near them, whoever it is, but the thought of one of them even  _ being  _ here, in this place that’s yours enough to sting, is a foul taste in your mouth. You try and ignore it, and there are troubles enough to keep you occupied.

 

Working with the biowire gives you screaming daymares three days out of four, stupid formless horror-things, nights and nights of senseless images of your dead family and the heavy scent of rotting meat. Vince makes noises about you maybe finding other shit as needs doing, but you got your pride and you won’t get sent running over a stupid motherfucking smell.

 

Your sleeping gets bad, then worse. You are so motherfucking tired of waking in terror. You know what would send the dreams away, set your soul quiet and dazed and biddable, but a pledge five sweeps old and counting don't break easy. You think also of the emperor’s offer, it prickles at your pan, confusing and floating and as tempting, almost, as the sopor. Instead, you turn back to sleeping dry. Your daymares still send you screaming awake, but at least these are memories, and not conjured horrors.

 

A week of sleeping dry, and you throw yourself from your pile, voice sore and hoarse from the day of screaming, to the steady sound of a doctorturer’s summons. The rainbowdrinker’s waiting for you after your shift with Vince, in a quiet little room off the main infirmary, with a little chair and a little table, and you manage not to hiss at it by virtue of you’re too motherfucking tired to. It has you pull your shirt off and hold still while it checks your bandages, makes you move your arms and twist your thorax and all sorts of other bullshit. 

 

“You’ve been sleeping poorly?” You’ve become used to the discomfort of letting a monster pretending to be a troll near you all helpless and unarmed, but rarely does it speak but for soft commands. You shrug to hide your discomfort as it pulls your eyelids apart to examine the yellow of your ganderbulbs. It seems unbothered by your silence. “Even so, color’s good,” it mutters as it moves around you, lifting your arms and prodding your ribs, offering its fingers for squeezing as you’ve done every motherfucking week you’ve been here. “ _ Ow. _ ” It mutters, not seeming real bothered as you let go its fronds and shove your hands sullenly in your pockets. “Strength’s returning. Breathe in.” You jump at the cold press of the listening device, but you breathe in obediently. “Lungs are clear. I’d say, barring an impending molt, we can schedule the procedure as soon as a perigee from now, provided you manage to rest up properly.” 

 

It smiles at you, like it expects happiness from the news. You scowl at it and ask all suspicious, “the fuck you talking about, procedure?” 

 

Its smile fades, confusion on its face, “Torion didn’t tell you?” 

 

*  *  *

 

You leave the doctorturer’s wing and wander the halls listless and confused and distantly, quietly resentful. 'forgot to tell you,' it'd said.  'Quite safe' and 'only way' and 'just a bit.' Your  _ horns. _ they wanted to carve away your  _ horns. _ Not a lot, not much. Kalton had deeper carvings done when you were kids but that was by a brother who knew the craft, and he still went dizzy and tender-horned for perigrees. And this will leave marks as permanent, shallow shadows of the suppressors left on your keratin for  _ centuries, _ should you live so long. You pace by your block a dozen times, too restless to open the door and face your slime before you stop and think about going in, to a quiet empty room and a quiet empty pile, and a coon filled with temptation. It opens up a gaping screaming void in your chest to think of a day alone in that room. You set your jaw and turn down a different hall, to find a new door to pace in front of. You’ve been proud, and arrogant and stubborn. Your brothers are dead and they wanna carve off your horns. You’re tired _. _ You want a hug _. _ You want a  _ pile. _

 

On your third time passing, you knock. There’s grumbling, and angry muttering, and you remember it’s past noon now, and sensible motherfuckers’ve gone to respite. The snarling, grouchy face that answers goes slack with shock before he blinks himself back to sense. You're struck by doubt. The fuck you doing? This is a mistake. "Uh." you chew your lip and don't look at him. "can't sleep." you say, hardly even meaning to. It’s not even a lie, you’re tired and tired and  _ tired. _ Through your soul ‘till you feel a daywalker more than a troll. He opens the door and stands aside without a word.

 

*  *  *

 

He looks fucking exhausted; you know those deep bruises under his eyes, and the drooping, listless walk. You wonder if you should ask what’s wrong. You wonder if you should get him something to drink. He slumps against your desk with his arms wrapped around himself, examining his feet. You’re about to ask him if he wants anything when he finally breaks the silence. 

 

“My ancestor.” He starts, his voice dull and quiet. “’S why I was all freaking the fuck out, then.” Well. Shit. “They uh.” He swallows hard and grits his teeth, but his voice still comes out choked and wet, “He was all being high as a motherfucker can be, higher’n any other brother of the paint’n mirth.” You want to say something to stop this travesty happening before you, he obviously doesn’t want to be telling you this, you must have fucked up somehow. But you’re frozen in place while he talks. “They showed me. After.” 

 

His voice cracks a little on the last word, and you can’t do much but breathe and fight the urge to drag him into a pile and make him feel better,  _ somehow. _ You don’t get it. You  _ really _ don’t. Ancestors are some bullshit highblood thing, but he’s trembling as he says this, and he freaked out as bad as any orphaned wriggler at someone else’s dead lusus. So you’re stuck looking at this kid, skinny and terrified and arms wrapped around himself so tightly it’s like he’s trying to hug himself, and the shrieking little voice in the back of your head gives up and goes  _ fuck it. _

 

He flinches when you touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t resist when you tug him forward, out of shock or actual consent, you don’t even fucking know. “If you have a problem with this.” You mutter into his ear, “You’d better punch me right fucking now.” This is such a bad fucking idea, you think desperately as he leans against you, arms shifting around your waist. “Or whenever.” You mumble, holding him a little tighter, “just warn me first.” 

 

He’s shaking, so you rub his back and his shoulder, trying to hit that tone in your throat that says  _ shoosh _ more than the actual sound even does; a soft, gentle chirr you picked up off a lieutenant sweeps ago. He’s taller than you, but he’s rail-thin and you’re built like a brick fucking wall, so you can hold him steady and wrap your arms around him for as long as he can stand you, and even when he lets his whole weight slump against you, you don’t shift back a single fucking centimeter. Goddamn he’s skinny.

 

*  *  *

 

He’s warm. His arms almost burn where they touch your bare skin, but they’re strong and solid and you choke out something that might even be a laugh when he tells you to hit him. You needed a hug  _ so motherfucking bad.  _ “Sure thing, motherfucker.” You manage, and press a little closer to him, “tell you straight up and all.”

 

You don’t say anything for a long minute, just lean against him and breathe and listen to the soft comforting sound he’s making at you that’s not quite a shoosh. “Made like to imply,” you finally say all soft, “if a brother had shit to say as oughta be said to a troll of a pitying nature. A motherfucker might be so inclined as to get his attention on.” He did, you know he did, but maybe all he wants is the hug, and the touch, and maybe not the talking, and it’s only you who wants the talking and to be told at what’s wisest to do. 

 

There's a minute where he's quiet and you think you've fucked up. And then it passes and he slumps a little, sighs against your shoulder, and leads you forward, through his office, through the door, and down into the pile in his respiteblock where you argued before. 

 

You don't wanna let go to settle into the pile. You cling to him like a scalebeast to sunblasted stone; he is  _ warm, _ and  _ alive, _ and you have not had a friendly touch in longer than you care to know. He hesitates a moment, before making a sound that's probably a grumble, and letting himself fall into the pile with a nice little twist that leaves you sprawled on top of him. You hide your face in his shoulder and pretend you never yelped like a stepped-on barkbeast. 

 

It's a strange, alien thing, this gasping need for touch, for closeness. You’ve never been in want of touch, before it all went to shit, and  _ after _ , you never had the offer, you guess. You shift around so your frondbends aren't in every tender point he's got, and accidentally end up curled into his side where he's sitting in the pile, tucked up all safe against The Emperor’s side.  _ The Emperor’s _ . This is such a bad motherfucking idea you’re even noticing it before it explodes. Motherfucking miracles. 

 

You almost speak praise to the lady when he wraps a cautious arm ‘round you, you’re so starved for it. He’s bigger than you by a lot, all muscle with that layer of padding over you never managed to get as a wriggler, and woulda lost anyway, in the Empress's dungeons. It means when you curl up tight against his side, you’re held secure and comfortable against him as you try to ignore the clawing shame that twists in your gut at your own desperation. It doesn’t work, but as you lie there he holds you steady, and in the face of your trembling he pulls you in against him and shooshes at you all soft, and it doesn’t make it go away, but it settles it some. 

 

He leaves you alone a minute, fronds petting at your shoulder all absent in thought, before he prompts, voice as gentle as you think he can make it, “You can’t sleep?” 

 

You could lie. You almost do, bristly defensive all at once, but he feels you go stiff and you feel him move like to shift away, and you ain’t ready for that to end so you cling and say, “Dreams.” All quick and more honest than you like. He settles back into the pile, waiting with what would be patience if you couldn’t feel the energy thrumming through him tense and on edge and you wonder if you oughta be irritated he’s still playing like you’re made of grubshell and glass. You think again on lying, but you were raised better than to go telling motherfucking falsehoods in a pile. Instead you curl more into his side and try to hide your face in his armpit. 

 

“You don’t have to—” there’s that motherfucking  _ tone _ again. The one that makes you growl your frustration out at his ribs and yank your head back to interrupt him. He cuts himself off when he sees you glaring, but he’s still looking at you all wide-curious eyes and caution.

 

“Dayterrors.” You mumble. You  _ know _ you don’t motherfucking have to. If you had to you wouldn’t motherfucking  _ be _ here. When you start talking he starts petting your shoulder again, like he’s trying to be encouraging. You hunch your shoulders a little, embarrassed of yourself. Stupidass wriggler dreams is whatall’s keeping you from your respite. “’S all. Stupid fakey hoofbeastshit. Sopor don’t help much. It’ll pass.” 

 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” He look like he wants to snatch the offer back as soon as he says it. You consider—pretend to consider, give him the bitterest little twist of a smile to cover how much you  _ want _ .

 

“Moving fast, then?” you ask, sarcastic as all shit as you tip your horns at him, like to offer. He recoils, sputtering denials and apologies so fast you get a pang of regret in you for teasing him like that, making him back off so quick. You miss hornrubs, and no family left to do it for you, he’s as safe as any other lowblood you’d be inclined to take on the offer. You lean on him more, and try to turn your bitterness into an apologetic wince. “Not as such. ‘Less you’re all wanting to do a kindness on a brother’n put me under.”

 

The look he gives you is trapped and panicked, and you tap your frondtips against his cheek, teasing-mocking to hide the disappointment. “Don’t gotta.” You say at him, and manage to make your voice a shade gentle. “Don’t mean to ask after shit as ain’t given free, for all it’d be nice as  _ fuck _ . ” There’s a flash of a scowl at your mocking little pap that you like a whole lot better than the forced-gentle, cautious face he makes at you, so you let the last of the bitterness ease from your grin. “Slept like shit most my motherfuckin life, the lord in’t callin’ me just ‘cause a skittish tender-fronded emperor don’t wanna gimme a hornrub.”

 

That and the fake-ass pout you give him gets you flustered stumbling and flailing about and it’s funny as  _ fuck. _ There’s maybe a touch of nerves in your laughter, but it still feels good to let go some of your guard and snicker at this red-faced troll, all clad in his armor still, and you throw all your caution to the wind, and sling an arm over his chest, haul yourself a little on top of him, bump your jaw against his temple in a sad attempt at a nuzzle “Come ooooon my Lord, gentle and cautious you’re all proving yourself to be, already got me in a pile, give a lowly brother a hand.” You waggle your eyebrows at him ‘till he puts his hand over your whole motherfucking face to shove you away and you gotta stop talking and bat at him, claws curled in and away, ‘till he leaves off and lets you see him again, all funny and colored straight through his hide. You give him a considering look as he hides his own face in his hands and curses you in words so colorful it sets you snickering all over again at the heat in your ears and your face under your paint at some of the shit he’s saying. He ain’t hard to look at, not that you ever got terrible choosy at the looks of your palemates. He ain’t vulnerable either, he don’t got the familiar paints of family, but he’s got broad strong hands, and a soft belly over a warrior’s muscle, and if you gotta be alive— and Kurloz will give you  _ so much shit _ if you skip your motherfucking cue— you’re not being alive without hornrubs and piles. And he did  _ offer.  _ So why not? 

 

Sometime while you were lost and thinking, he pulled his face out of his hands, and he’s looking at you with this look all quiet and confused and you don’t even know what else. “Why me?” like you ain’t even been  _ just _ thinking on that shit.

 

You don’t think it’s a no, but you also don’t wanna think on ‘why him’, so you make yourself shrug and move like to get up, “If you don’t wanna. Said you ain’t gotta, just kinda got the thought a brother might find a gentle touch here.” 

 

He gives you a look all narrow and hard, and as he sits up in the pile, he gets a hand on your shoulder to make you go still and settle back down, suspicious and curious. “Did I say no? The answer is no, no I did not.” He takes a breath and closes his eyes, like to steel himself for something and you tense. You maybe came here for a pale encounter and some hugs, and you got you some hugs but you maybe still don’t trust this troll all the way. “Look. We need to talk about this. This thing where you show up out of nowhere and we end up in a pile.” You snort. He makes it sound like you show up all drunk and stupid or some shit. He scowls at you. “I’m serious. This is serious shit you’re asking for, and I want to know why the fuck you keep coming to me. There’s dozens of trolls that would be a better option for you. I’m temperamental, irritable, constantly being interrupted by rebellion business. I’m hardly a  _ comforting _ presence, I made a troll with a twelve-sweeps-long combat career cry yesterday.” He throws his hands up in the air, “I mean I know everyone’s heard the rumors but I do  _ not _ actually have mutant pacification psychic ability.” 

 

That one you hadn’t heard yet. Vince told you the one about the cholerbear and the treefruit the other day, but he also let you steal his hoof-derived confectionary off his plate in retribution for spinning tales, so you figured it was bullshit. “’Cause you offered?” you know right off that was the wrong answer, him looking like he got stabbed and opening his stupidity maw to say some shit. You kinda pap the air between you, “Naw, lemme finish. Merciful motherfucking  _ sister _ , you got the patience of a grub.” Only you didn’t have anything else to say so there’s a long pause where his face goes all twisty-bitter and hurting in a way you didn’t mean to make it. “It’s like. Fuck.” Now you gotta think, ‘cause you ain’t gonna disgrace yourself and your whole motherfucking Family telling falsehood in a motherfucking pile, and you don’t wanna think too hard on why you’re here in this pile ‘cause maybe that hurts too much yet. “You got power, right? Nah, shut up, ain’t like that. You got power to blow, all emperory and shit. Got power on  _ me, _ being as your motherfucking laws say I ain’t being a troll all proper and free _.  _ Mercy I appreciate, my heretical motherfucker, but all I got just now, I got by your own motherfucking whim and wish.” And you don’t think on it much, ‘cause when you do, it burns and stings like booze on a split lip, but it’s true and he’s going like to deny it so you plunge on, talking as the thoughts come, without thinking on them too motherfucking much. “Troll so motherfuckin low he goes right ‘round to high again, and has a high motherfucking subjugglator living on his sufferance, and I thought the worst of you”, your voice comes out soft and quiet. You think maybe you don’t anymore, as you sit beside him in the pile, your leg and your hip and your side still pressed all up against his. “Expected unholy acts and heathen desecration and slow faithless death.” You snort and chew idly on the ragged edge of a claw. “Messiahs’ own joke.” You haven’t decided on who yet. The tyrian witch, maybe. You, maybe. “So you ain’t done that. Nor made an order as oughtn’t been followed, nor hardly any order direct at a brother at all. A motherfucker’s got an urge to coddle, and a pan set to bruise a brother’s pride, but I ain’t been hurt much, ain’t faced proper inquisition.” Your voice has the ring of realization to it as you speak. “First time, figured on a powerful motherfucker was best kept gratified.” His face does something real motherfucking unpleasant there, but you shove on ‘cause you think if you stop now you won’t ever start again. “Only a motherfucker went and said no.” Your ears burn and you don’t look him too deep in the eyes. “And you helped, in the hall when I was, y’know.” Freaking out over a motherfucking smell. “And you  _ offered.”  _ Didn’t order, didn’t force. Didn’t even motherfucking take what was given, for all it stings your pride. Now you’re done with fearing retribution and revenge, there’s a touch of relief he refused you that morning. This sounds too much a declaration for you, “Ain’t gotta mean anything.” You mutter. He’s not family, you can let him help you without needing him like family. “But if you wanna lend a hand. Wouldn’t say no is all.” A troll’s got his pride, after all. He’s already looking like you’re stabbing him in the gut or some shit, but when you finish talking, he looks like he’s about ready to die. “Uh, you alright?” He’s just staring all hurting and you got no motherfucking idea what it is you said wrong.

 

"I'm pale for you." he says, all in a rush like ripping off a dermal adhesive patch. "not like that's a big deal or anything I'm such a fucking freak I'm pale for half the trolls I know." he runs his hands through his hair, you see his fingers curl and tug almost unconsciously as he breathes out hard. "so don't take that as some kind of fucking demand, ok? I'm not interested in some bullshit power play thing. I just." he gestures, hands open wide like 'what the fuck?' "I think you should know. If you're asking me for help. No strings attached isn't something I can do." 

 

It takes you a minute of staring at him to sort out what-all he said at you, and when you think you got it, you’re still kinda motherfucking confused. “Kay?” He’s looking at you all miserable with his maw opening to spit out something else stupid, and you reach out absently to put your graspfronds over his mouth so you can get your think on all proper and quiet. “Sh, bro.” He’s all saying it like it’s a problem, but you’re just kinda motherfucking confused as shit. Not expected, no. You figured him the kind as got off on coddling motherfuckers, like bluebloods do sometimes. Proper confession though, said all agonized and hurting? You don’t think you ever expected that. “So like. You got yourself some real strong conciliatory urges at a brother.” He nods with your hand over his mouth still, and you keep on thinking. “Only you get them diamond-sharp feels at all manner of motherfuckers?” you don’t wait on a nod for that one, but he gives you one anyway. You know lowbloods get their quadrenting on all lonely and one in a square, and no festivals of flesh or mercy with family all sprawled together in love or hate or palest, gentlest pity. But you just kinda figured they ain’t got their affection on at motherfuckers as ain’t the one they already got. Not like _ you _ ever strayed beyond what family offered, not like Kalton with his pretty lowbloods, or Istmun with his stern manners, you got all you needed from the sibs around you, brothers and sisters and all who loved you and who you loved. But even if you had, if you’d found some soul-touched partner with color less strong, you don’t think you’d ever have the hurting, loathsome look this troll’s got on. “Kay.” You say again, and shift your hand so you ain’t silencing him no more, just holding the curve of his jaw and the soft roundness of his cheek, “Now you know how they say on clowns,” you start, pushing your church drawl as hard as you can, “All stupid as motherfuck, clowns.” He makes a face at you, “How’s about you enlighten a stupid-ass bit of circus trash as I’m all being, ‘n explain on a brother why’s that a bad thing again?”

 

He’s staring at you eyes all big and motherfucking round and all twisted-inward hatred that kinda scares you to see, like you’ve gone and snuck his skin off for a look at his soul, and you not even meaning to. “I- How the fuck do you even  _ ask _ that?”

 

He’s gone all screechy-shrill and you pap his face a little, just a gentle tap-tap-stroke of your fingers along his cheek and a gentle “shhh.” 

 

He closes his mouth with a click of teeth, jaw working like he’s chewing his tongue and you frown. Before you think to tell him to stop that shit he sighs and scrubs his hands over his face, dislodging you. “Look. It’s late as fuck,” he says finally. “We can talk about it later, but I’m not giving you a hornrub, is my point.” He flaps his hand at you all ‘shut the fuck up’ when you make a sad noise at him. “But I— if you can’t sleep, I have some leaf-extract-bags Kanaya made up for me that help a little? And you can.” He stutters off, going red a second before muttering, “You’re welcome to stay the day. If you want. You don’t have to.” 

 

You give him a shadow of a grin. You don’t think his awkward fumbling’s meant to put you at ease, but it does kinda, that he ain’t telling no at you, and he ain’t making orders, he’s all off-balance and made to act like a troll and not an emperor, and you like them little cracks you see. “Sure, bro,” you say at him, and when he comes back with two gently-scented mugs, you squirm up under his arm, ignoring his protests and drown your apprehension in hot tea.

 

*  *  * 

 

You wake warm and rested, only a little sore from an unfamiliar pile. The smell of evening stimulant hangs heavy in the air, and as you open your eyes blearily, the warm, breathing body you lie curled against has two hands wrapped 'round a big heavy mug and a tablet balanced ‘cross his knees. You make grabby hands at it without thinking, pawing all ineffectual at the mug with a sad little sound. There's a low, territorial growl that cuts off quick, and after a minute another, littler cup is shoved at you, all steamy and near-white with cream put in it. A cautious taste tells you there’s more sugar in there than proper coffee, and you ignore Karkat’s bashful mutter “Didn’t know how you liked it—” to down half of it in a go. There’s a bemused, “nevermind” as you lean a little more on him and don’t think about how the heathen motherfucking emperor made you evening-after coffee and wrap your chilled fingers around the warmth of the mug.  _ Motherfuck _ you feel good just now. Don’t wanna let your poor pan go running itself off and fucking up this teeny bit of peace you’ve found yourself.    
  
“The fuck was in that tea?” you finally think to ask. It’d been kinda foul-tasting under the flavor of sleepy flowers’n root sugar, but it didn’t taste nor feel like any shit you’re used to, and even after sleeping you feel  _ good. _ Rested like you ain’t been in sweeps, though maybe part’ve that was from curling your skinny self up against the warm bulk of the emperor and letting him pet your hair and hum unfamiliar songs at you once you’d both had your tea, letting the comfort of warm drink seep into your bones. 

 

You kinda wish you hadn’t asked when he looks at you all horror and panic, “I don’t know, it’s not strong, I swear, it’s just supposed to help you sleep, it’s not even supposed to be that relaxing, it’s some kind of root shit, I’ll ask Kana-”   
  
You cut off his panicked stammering with, “Got any more?” His face is motherfucking  _ priceless, _ all guilty and shocked and relief timid and cautious beneath. You ain’t laughed so hard in forever, ‘specially when he scowls and bats at you, claws all turned in and gentle. You’re still snickering as your tablet goes off with your reminder Vince’ll be looking for you, and even as you take your leave, you’re feeling good enough to bump your jaw against his in not-quite-a-kiss, all automatic and unmeaning affection before you dart out the door and down to your own block to freshen up your paint and look a shade less shameful. 

 

*  *  *

 

You don’t see him again for a while. The memory of the night keeps the worst of the horrors off your pan, and you sleep well for maybe half a week. When you get to the biowire vats a good half-hour late, moving languid and smug with the sense of a good pile all through you, Vince gives you a squinty judgy face you figure is only ‘cause his palemate’s still off-base and he’s too motherfucking lowblooded to find some other motherfucker to hook up with in the meantime. The feeling of quiet satisfaction lingers through the day, even with the nasty smelly work of harvesting biowires for the spymaster and the little tech motherfuckers. You rest, and wake, and go about it all again. By the time you have your first daymare since the pile, it’s been maybe two nights of peace, and you think real hard on just bearing it. 

 

But it’s been sweeps since you had a motherfucker about as was willing to offer you kindness, and it’s harder than you expected to resist the call of gentle touches and warm tea and a soft pile. He opens his door looking haggard and tired, and when he sees you there he frowns all worried. “Are you—”

 

You cut him off with a waved hand and ask, soft and kinda naked in your hopefulness, “Still ain’t gotta talk.” You step into his space and nuzzle your jaw against his temple, “Got any more’f that tea?” 

 

There’s a pause and a sigh, but the look on his face ain’t unhappy when he pulls away to let you in the block. “Yeah, you fucking wreck. Come on.” 

 

This time you talk him into letting you do a kindness on him. You ain’t learned in the art, but you give a  _ bitchtits _ backrub for an untrained subjuggulator. Once he’s loose and limp in the pile, you curl up against him and let yourself drift away. 

 

*  *  *

 

You wake to tapping and grumbling and a mug of coffee, little less cream than the last time, but still all sweet as diamonds and sin. You stretch and yawn and stretch an arm out to pull the mug closer to you. “Evening.” You say all soft and relaxed. He’s got his tablet all balanced on his knees, tapping away with his angry little claws. “’Chu doin?”

 

He startles some at your voice and looks up, eyes open and unguarded as he looks at you, and it strikes you all again that his unpainted face shows  _ every little thing _ , and it’s kinda motherfucking terrifying to see. You put it outta your head and rest against him a little heavier, too motherfucking lazy to move any more of you but to cuddle the warm mug up against you some.    
  
“Supply reports.” He finally says, a little cautiously. When you peer at his screen it’s all numbers and rows and shit.

 

You make a face and sip your drink. “Ain’t you got motherfuckers for doing that shit?” Looks boring as shit, and he’s got a face like he’s set to throw his tablet ‘cross the block. 

 

He sighs and gulps his own coffee. “Anyone else would just fuck it up.” He yawns. You frown some at him, he sounds like Istmun, all determined and resigned that everyone but him is a motherfucking failure.

 

Struck by sudden, unexpected affection, you sigh and shift up, juggle your coffee around till you can drape yourself over his back, chin hooked on his shoulder, where you can give his face a little nuzzle now and again. There's a long bemused pause. “Are we going to talk about this?”

 

You shrug against him and sip your coffee. “You got important shit as needs doing just now.” You still don’t motherfucking know what’s up, or what’s gonna happen, or what he’s gonna want of you, when you have that talk with him on why is hurts him so much to be pale at all manner of trolls, so you’re pleased to not have it as long as you can manage. Also you’re comfy here, and you can wrap your arm not occupied with coffee ‘round his ribs and bask in the closeness and the friendly touch you still crave with gasping desperation. “It’ll bide.” You lean your head against his and heave a satisfied sigh. “Got you enough shit to be worrying on.” 

 

There’s a moment where you think he’s gonna push, but then your tablet goes off for you to get to your shift, and you groan and slump against him a minute before you pull yourself away all regretful. You almost wanna just ignore it, but if you lounge around here much longer, he might actually make you talk on that shit he wants talking on. 

 

Regretfully you heave yourself off the Emperor, “Oughta be going. Vince’ll be all motherfucking salty at me if I’m late again.” 

 

There’s a look on his face, annoyance quickly squashed, and you grin a little. Cute as all fuck he might be but you’re still glad to annoy the shit outta him by being not all quiet and biddable.

 

*  *  *

 

The third evening you wake up in the emperor's pile, he's curled into an angry little ball, scowling at his tablet, and you grumble and crawl into his lap, half-asleep the whole time. "work too motherfuckin much" you complain, and drape yourself over his chest, trapping the tablet beneath you and ignoring his protests. “Shhh.  _ Lord _ you got all them fights’n fires in you, Shoosh my nubbly motherfucker.”

 

“Gamzee, I need to finish th—” you kiss him, pale-chaste and gentle as hell, and he stutters off into scarlet-faced silence as you snuggle your face up in the crook of his throat and hum at him, pleased as fuck with yourself as you smother a yawn. 

 

You hear put-upon grumbling, but then careful fingers are running through your hair, and you grin against his collarbone, smug as fuck. “Sleep, diamond mine.” You mumble to him as you follow your own advice.

 

*  *  *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back. ish. There should be one more update before november, and I'm hoping NaNo will help me get a chapter or two out, but real life keeps butting its ugly head in, so updates will slow for a while.  
> Hopefully not three-months slow, but slowish. 
> 
> I may come back and buff out some rough spots tonight, I just really wanted to get this up before I went to work. If you see any weird bits or typos please let me know!
> 
> Warnings: one blink-and-you-miss-it casual suicide reference, I think that's it.


	11. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed warnings in the endnote, with spoilers. please mind the tags, let me know if I've missed anything.  
> Vague Warnings for:  
> Gore  
> Panic attack  
> Torture mention

Gamzee snores softly against you, completely unaware of how your hands have frozen in his hair. He couldn’t possibly have been talking to you. You’ve only barely started this weird arrangement. You’ve already told him how you feel. About him, about everyone. He sounded like he was talking in his sleep. That tiny little spark of hope in your pusher is stupid and wrong.

You pick up your tablet again, working carefully around Gamzee. You _really_ need to talk to him when he wakes up.

*  *  *

You don’t get to talk to him when he wakes up because you fall asleep on top of him, and you’re both awakened by your stupid blaring ringtone.

You answer with the verbal equivalent of a keyboard smash, scramble your brain more or less together like you weren’t just napping with (Your palebuddy? Casual pile? ~~Moirail?~~ ) in the middle of the worknight, and manage to snap, “ _what?”_

*  *  *

He’s here. He’s here weeks early and Karkat’s all orange ‘round the edges of his eyes and even without your horns working right you can smell the panic on him. You wanna get your hands on him, soothe him down and back to the pile and make him forget the things he worries on, but you can’t, ‘cause he’s _here_ , smug-ass motherfucking fish, and you’re paralyzed with startled fear as Karkat scrambles out of the pile and strips, in such a hurry he don’t even notice your startled yelp as he drags his night-old uniform off, sheds his armor, and pulls on fresh from his wardrobe, body armor, uniform all crisp and clean, hair still sleep-tangled and pile-mussed ‘till he drags his claws through it a couple times.

He pauses at the door. “Stay here.” You blink, startled out of your startlement and open your mouth to object, “Gamzee, _please,_ I’m not sure what’s going on yet, what kind of fucking play they’re trying, and I don’t want-” he stops, closes his mouth, tries again, “Please just stay here.” His eyes are soft and careful, and you want to be angry but he’s so _worried._

“Yeah, bro.” The relief is worth it, watching it slide across his face and then he’s gone.

You count slowly, make yourself wait twenty seconds before breaking your promise, and then you scramble right the fuck out the door to report to Vince. He’ll be needing help with the prep, if the delegate’s this early. If your hands tremble with nerves or anger, ain’t no one knows but you.

*  *  *

The diplomatic blocks are ready before you report in, the meeting rooms are being prepped by the saniterminators. Vince looks like he wants to send you away like Karkat tried, but he’s smarter, and just heaves a resigned sigh before he lets you strap on an olive-edged securitormentor vest, grab a lead-weighted baton, and tag along to the airdocks for crowd control. The shuttle’s lurid fuchsia and coasts on a cushion of psionic sparks. No ship that tiny needs a helmsman’s rig to get about, but if fish’re nothing else they’re vain, and if helmsmen are nothing else, they’re costly. You’re hanging with Vince at the edges of the shameless crowd of onlookers when the door opens, and if you’re craning your neck just as much, no one’s paying attention to tattle. The delegate’s security team comes out first, and a harried-looking aid. No one looks to start trouble, and you been explicitly told you ain’t to get involved even if they do, you’re just here for looks and ‘cause Vince don’t have better for you to do. You’re relaxing a little bit, everyone here looks like they’re legit, from the tiny bit you know, maybe there won’t be trouble after all. And then the delegate comes out, and you go cold straight through.

You know those horns. You know those eyes, those motherfucking hands all spindly long and practiced in his work. His work that ain’t diplomacying. He smiles wide and bows as he shakes Karkat’s hand. You shrink back behind Vince’s reassuring form as his eyes flick over the crowd. Vince is looking at you, brow all scrunched like he wants to be concerned at you. You wanna wave him off but you’re too motherfucking busy being preybeast frozen, trying to see if he’s seen you or not.  

Why’s he _here?_ Why’s _he_ here? You shake your head at Vince’s question, who the fuck knows what it was, too distracted by the _not a motherfucking diplomat,_  for the love of the vengeful lord’s _motherfucking bondage kink,_ Karkat is _shaking his hand._

You don’t look away until Karkat pulls his hand away, teeth bared in what might be a smile if a motherfucker was _blind._ Good. Bare your motherfucking fangs at him, brother, show him you ain’t chill with his trespass on the air around you.  Those eyes search the crowd again, and you freeze as they meet yours, and his smile stretches that much more. There’s a hand on your shoulder, a warm one that you know well enough by now to not bite, to let pull you away, hands you trust to break the line of sight between you and him, and apply a solid shoulder to your chest until you budge your walkstubs in some kind of order, away, through the little side door, further still, a distant voice going “Yessir, yessir, nosir, of course, war-general Vantas, sir, I’ll take care of it, sir,” in tones all stiffly professional like you only hear lowbloods do. And then doors open and close, and you trust this voice and these hands, so you keep right on moving ‘till the world around you changes into a block you know real well, and  you break away from your brother to bury yourself in Karkat’s pile.

*  *  *

You stay in the pile a long time. Vince sticks around some, directs a couple recruits he stole from the infantry in doing what needs done from his tablet. You don’t mind. He’s the closest thing to family you got just now, his voice all quiet and indistinct as he instructs someone on how to change a valve on a thing you stopped paying attention to. You’re just breathing and trying to stop the terror lump in your throat from being tears. You _hate_ this.

At some point, Vince stands up from where he’s been chilling in Karkat’s desk chair, feet propped on the desk Karkat never uses that you’ve seen, and a door opens and closes. You curl up a little tighter under the pile. Someone sits down next to you, and a hand falls on your shoulder. You don’t flinch. You very carefully don’t flinch.

The hand on your shoulder moves, thumb rubbing soothing circles into your vestigial wingstrut. And he waits. He waits and you’re kinda in love with him for it. “Sorry.” Is the first thing you manage to say. It comes out smoother than you expected.

He sighs again. “I’ll be pissed later.” You tense a little, but he don’t sound mad really, just tired. “I have to ask. If it’s important for how I deal with this smug asshole, I really need to know.”

You hunch your shoulders, curl more into yourself. “Ain’t a diplomat. _Really_ motherfucking ain’t a diplomat.”

“Kinda figured, what with the panic attacks and the recognizing a dude you shouldn’t ever have met before.” The hand stops its circles to tug your shoulder a little. You don’t resist him gathering you up against his chest. You want his comfort right now. “You wanna tell me what he is?” you’re quiet for a while while he rubs your back with the heel of his hand.  “If you don’t want to do this here, we can go somewhere else. Somewhere less.” He gestures around his block. You guess he means ‘less in a pile’.

You shrug and stay quiet a minute longer, working to push all that scared and hurting back down. “Interigarroter.” Your voice comes out dull and flat. “Whatever heathens got for laughsasssins maybe.”

“Oh.” He tightens his arms around you while he thinks on that. You think maybe you’ll need to elaborate, but he sees the connection of it quick enough. “Well. Fuck.”

Your breath comes out in something like a laugh. “Yeah.” Shame rises up and chokes at you. You swallow it back down. “Sorry.” You don’t even motherfucking _know_ what you’re sorry for just now. Being scared maybe. You didn’t figure you were scared of him ‘till you saw him here. You curl into Karkat and breathe for a while. You dunno how long you’re both there, just quiet and breathing.

When he takes a breath you tense up all over again, ‘cause he’s looking like he’s gonna say something he don’t wanna. “I have to ask you something.” His hands thread through the growing fluff of your hair, “And it makes me an _extremely_ shitty palemate. But this is.” He takes a breath like he’s bracing himself. “More. important. Than us.” He talks like he’s forcing every word out. It hurts even so, in that little selfish part of your pumpbiscuit. “I need you to not start a revenge cycle. Not until we can figure out if he’s here for legitimate negotiations or not.” You’re statue-still. Revenge hadn’t crossed your pan ‘till he said it, but now he has, to give it up chafes something _fierce,_ turns fear back into hate again _._ Karkat talks faster, voice gone apologetic and pleading. “I fucking _swear_ , if he was anyone else, I’d wrap him up with a bow for you, but I can _not_ risk this whole crazy endeavor for one troll.” His hand cradles the back of your head, and you were angry, _burning_ with it, but that hand, that voice, that sad and worried face, banks the fire and soothes it to a smolder. “Can I trust you stay away from him?”

You don’t _want_ to. You want your deuce clubs. You want Kurloz’s big skullfucker mace. You want your brothers back and the little bright sunroom at the back of the cathedral and all its tools and shackles to do a holy motherfucking work on this brinesucker. Now you’ve remembered revenge is a thing, now you’ve remembered he can’t take you back, that even if Karkat tried to give you away, Vince wouldn’t stand for it,  you want to take him down into parts and turn his gills into a fancy hat.

Karkat looks so worried. Like he’s scared he’s gonna lock you up or something. You think about your family. About your learning of leading all pushed on you. About your schoolfeeders and ditching lessons and Kurloz sitting you down to scold in his low, disapproving rumble. _Patience, little brother._ You’d grumbled low and insolent in your half-grown throat and he’d looked at you like he was laughing on the inside when he said, _gotta do shit we don’t like, sometime. I gotta talk pretty at insolent-ass tradesmen sometime, you gotta do your motherfuckin’ schoolfeeds sometime._ In the now you heave a sigh, grumble low and insolent in your more-grown throat, knowing Karkat’s right, and this is too important, and still pissed anyway. “Won’t go revenging. Promise. ” You’re sullen and pissed about it, but the relief that washes over Karkat’s face soothes it some. It’s worth it, you guess.

*  *  *

It’s three nights before you break that promise, and really, you’re proud of yourself lasting so long.

It's your free shift, getting on to dawn. Biowire harvesting has been a haven these last nights, which you resent with your whole being. It fills up your pan with nasty smells and careful trimming and fighting down the rising bile. It’s a shitty haven and a haven all the same. But now your shift is done, and for all you appreciate the lack of brooding it gives you, you don’t appreciate it so much as to want to linger. You've already said your mornings at Vince, him being _real_ motherfucking subtle 'bout wanting to go and find himself a cart to go and fetch his moirail, fresh arrived on leave, from the airdocks for some privacy and a pile. So you're bored, and you don't much feel like making the trip to your quiet block, where you got not much to do but think. The exertion clinic ain't terrible far from where you are, so that's where you get yourself. It's empty this late in the morning, free of anyone you know to notice and rat you out, and you’re in no mood for the gentle exercises you’ve been set by your doctorturer. So instead of that, you set yourself up at a training effigy. Running through pattern-dances and exercises you only mostly remember takes up plenty of space in your pan. You focus on remembering, and the stretch and ache of muscles gone lazy with lack of practice, and scolding yourself under your breath when you catch your feet going wrong or your hands not moving as they should. You kinda wish you had clubs handy 'cause you never were much good barehanded.

It don’t take long to get yourself into a rhythm enough you don't notice the sound of the door, nor the footsteps behind you. You don’t notice anything amiss 'till a voice you know better than you strictly want to goes, "It’s been some time, my friend."

You flinch, and then hate yourself for flinching, and grit your teeth and refuse to look. Ain't no one here but you and this effigy, with its face already clawed off, and your fists kinda raw from the canvas, you maybe shoulda taped up. You steady your breathing. How's it go again? High-middle-high-low? Something like that. close enough.

"You’ve surprised us." He goes on like you responded with greetings and an invitation to stick around, rude-ass lusus shit. "We really expected you'd be done." Fuck, you lost your rhythm. "Considering the nature of your bloodline," ain't no sounds here. Maybe some shitblood in the lockers farted or something, "we were sure you would have cleaned house for us by now."

So that's why she sent you. Stupid. Like you're some feral barkbeast with no control? Did they not see you fight? Did they not _see_ your control those sweeps in their cage? "I never expected you'd still be playing the obedient pet." Your rhythm stutters and you curse softly. You can _feel_ his nasty needle-teeth grin. Your fists have gone loose, hands twisted to bring your claws to bear, and you have to control yourself to keep from gutting the effigy. You promised Karkat. _Patience,_ you make yourself remember Kurloz saying to you. _Endurance,_ as a nurseradicator stitches up your back, you don't even remember how you got hurt. Someway stupid, for Kurloz to be scolding at you. _Pain, like all things, is a tool, little brother. If you can’t use it, put it away._ “I suppose blood follows blood. Kurloz surprised us all as well, in how rapidly he folded." You close your fists, slowly, Make them not be claws anymore. Make yourself not tear his _fool motherfucking tongue out_ , for sullying Kurloz’s hatchname with it. You promised, no revenge.

You take a breath. _Patience,_ you tell yourself. “He tried to fight, of course. That Makara pride.”  Remember Kurloz grinning at you, the shit-eating one when he's about to tell you a _real_ bad joke. The kind that goes right 'round to being good again. “But in the end, he bowed his head and kissed her feet.” Remember him hellmirth and glorious rage on the battlefield. He knew when to cull a motherfucker and when to not. He’d expect the same of you by now. “He did as he was told.” Remember his hand on your back, your head in a loadgaper, his softrough voice whispering _this too shall pass._ “Did you know what he would do for you?” Of course you did. You were family, right? He was your ancestor and your favorite brother but he would have done as much for any of you. “I imagine it’s what finally broke him.” You feel a body step close, catch the faint whiff of salt and sea as you feel cold breath on your ear. “Did you ever wonder, how we cleaned your disgusting blight from the coasts so quickly?”

It takes you a minute of fighting revulsion and the urge to shift away before it hits you, _really_ hits you, what he’s saying about Kurloz. And then the rage hits you, holy and burning, and your promise suddenly means a little but less.

Kurloz used to tell you, ain't blindness as makes a rage holy. Messiahs got no fondness particular for the lack of seeing. The stealthy curl of ice in your chest is just as motherfucking sacred as the red-tinged fury that clouds your eyes in battle. You’ve gone still at your effigy, hands loosened back to claws resting at your side as you breathe. A hand, cold and clammy, falls on your shoulder, gripping firm, like to turn you around and as you spin with it, your promise stops meaning anything at all.

You’d never realized, you think, wild and grieving and suddenly struck with the urge to laugh, that he’s used to you crippled. He’s used to you tied and bound and starving. He’s a piss-poor interigarroter by clown standards, he’s used to weak and whimpering captives. You remember his petty rages at your defiant self. You remember early on, how you could laugh in his face and know what he’d do. Your first blow catches him, open-palmed and tearing, in the face. He dodges your second, all shocked and startled as your claws pierce his pretty silks, ripping through but missing the wound-bright slashes on his thorax. Not even light armor, here in the desertbeast’s den. Shameful arrogance. He turns your second strike into a glancing blow along his throat, scoring oozing lines across the little gills there. He’s slow. The limbs that seemed elegant three nights ago are gawky and thin, preternatural saltblooded strength left to wither by a lazy piece of shit as thinks himself untouchable, with his little knives and his poisons. He doesn’t expect any better from you, and ain’t that the _funniest motherfucking thing._

You catch an arm and spin him around with you, slam him against the effigy by his throat, and stop there, breathing harder than you should, the hint of a grin playing manic and bitter across your face as you realize you’re bigger than him, stronger than him. He’s looking up at you all shocked and motherfucking surprised, the hint of fear you can’t taste anymore playing at the corners of his mouth before affront floods in and he struggles, eyes narrowed to angry slits. “How _dare_ you.” he stretches his arm out, you see the flicker of a strifedeck and you lash out with your other hand, claws drawing bright, beautiful slashes across his arm. He yelps like a fresh-pupated wriggler and snatches his hand back, curled against his chest. A needle-thin knife clatters to the floor. “I’ll see you broken-horned and fucking _eviscerated_ for this,” he seethes, “how dare you lay a _hand—”_ You use your grip on his throat to headbutt him. A bright sharp pain flares in your horns. You do it again and when you pull away to see the smudge of your purple in his hair you choke out a laugh.

“Shut up.” You say, voice murder-soft as you flex your claws against his throat-gills and he gives you a choked whimper. “Shut your MOTHERFUCKING mouth.” You don’t mean to roar it but your voice still echoes through the exertion clinic. “You come here all motherfucking false.” You slap his gills, open-palmed, businesslike. It makes him gasp and twitch them open, like you knew it would. You slip your claws in the little opening he gives you, let him feel what you’re about to do, and then you drive them in hard and up, with the ease of long practice. His scream echoes more than your roar did. “You come here all false and speak unto me _blasphemies._ ” You let his throat go and set your free claws on his other side. “Blasphemous motherfucking _lies._ ” He didn’t, he wouldn’t. You were important but you were never _that_ important.

But. Two sweeps isn’t so long. Not when your family stood centuries before that. You snarl and shove the doubt away as you drive your other hand into his gills, and this time you _feel_ him scream around you, the shiver and twitch of his lungs against your fingerpads, the pricklesoft itch of his gillstuff on your wrist. His claws score your shoulders, leave bloody lines across your arms and your face. “Strung up like a night’s catch and still you make the pretense.” A snort twitches out of you as you wrap your hands around his innards and _squeeze,_ savoring the soft sound of pain he makes _._ “Like you’re higher’n me. Motherfucker, ain’t you heard the good word? We’re higher than _everybody._ ”

He’s looking on you horrified, mouth open like to keep talking. You twitch your claws at his lungs ‘till he closes his stupidity maw.  You won’t have your family blasphemed against. After all you’ve lost, you won’t have this disrespect. "Messiahs both" you say, the words a purr as they roll off your tongue. His eyes dart around, wide with pain, "By blood alone I am your servant." The words come to you haltingly. It's been sweeps since you gave proper sacrifice. He looks at you, pain becoming confusion becoming _terror._ He don’t know the words, but he knows the cadence of the sacrament as well as any fish that’s seen holy blood spilled. "By your word alone I act." You twitch your claws in his lungs again and he gasps and chokes and coughs, a globule of violet splattering your chest. "By your whim alone I live."

"Hateful brother, lord of the eternal Rage," these come more easily, the ones you spoke every motherfucking morning to silent stone walls, "Make me your tool, allow my unworthy hand your strength and your fury." his breath comes bubbling now. You wish you had time enough to take your leisure with this. You want the space to take your satisfaction all proper. "In your name I spill this blood, and for my own motherfucking pleasure."

“P-p—” You lift him up from his gills and brace him a little higher against the effigy, listening for the word he’s trying to say as he looks up at you all pleading, like you ain’t done the same at him in more recent perigees, with _your_ blood on his face and his hands, and did he ever offer reprieve? “Please,” he gasps when he’s done screaming again. He coughs and his lips are painted violet with his blood. There’s the sound somewhere of a door slamming, but it’s not important here and now. You think about it. As much as you can with rage coiled in your limbs and wrapped ‘round your throat and burning-cold in your chest. You think about his begging. You think about how you begged. You think about your promise to Karkat. “Please don’t—” you twist your fingers in his insides and _pull._

*  *  *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:  
> Violence I would consider canon-typical.  
> A character has to deal with the intrusion of a torturer(abuser?) into a previously safe space.  
> The cathartic evisceration of said torturer/abuser  
> Bodyhorror probably  
> Specifically lung/internal organ trauma, a copious amount of blood, and aforementioned eviceration  
> Sadism? Is it sadism if it's revenge?
> 
> Once again, let me know if I've missed anything.
> 
> A Note:  
> Fuck me it's been nearly a year holy shit I'm so sorry. I stopped writing for a little bit. Things got kinda real around November, I had to quit my job in December, and I also got into kind of a love/hate place with this story. A million thanks to everyone who's left comments and reviews on this story, it was literally the only thing that kept bringing me back.
> 
> This chapter was a tough one, I've been nervous about finishing it since I started writing it, which incidentally was probably over a year ago by now, and long before I wrote chapter 10. if I missed any warnings or need to add something to the tags, please _please_ let me know, I absolutely don't want anyone taken by surprise. 
> 
> As always, questions/comments/concerns you don't wanna put a name to, anon is always open at [my tumblr](http://technicalchaotic.tumblr.com/)


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